LA CLINICA

241. The history of the equipal
April 18 - May 5, 2024

with the participation of Edith Morales, Morelos León Celis, Octavio Aguilar, y Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas
curated by Parallel and La Clinica



Rephasing Mendes, it use to be that the colonial regimes of the Western world were involved in the notion of race whitening and ethnic cleansing through crude violence and the implementation of subtle designed-objects such as the equipal, which involves adapting a body posture away from the "dirty" land towards "clean" social activities and gestures of being established by the Europeans themselves. Today, the emerging power structures taking shape go beyond body posture into the infinitesimal domain of (yes) the molecule, or put in simple terms, diet. Monopolies hold a tight grip on the means of production curtailing the average farmer's ability to persist in cultivating indigenous corn. "The modes of intensive monoculture promoted by these corporations, such as the absence of crop rotation, cause an increase in the risk of pests and require aggressive pesticides (also produced by them) that in their turn exhaust the land and make soil infertile and profoundly destabilize agricultural rhythms." (also Mendes) The work of Edith Morales reminds us how it is those who plant are in permanent resistance and protection of their native seeds. Resistance to western means of corn cultivation; resistance to erasure of history; how we chose not to blindly adapt or imitate the modern world but to make it our own; our ability to gather together in cohesive social action; these are examples of resistance under the shared condition of our South that are gathered together in this exhibition.