Lorena Molina’s constellation of videos and photographs is an amalgamation of moments from several bodies of work made between 2016 and 2022. Stemming from the series This must be the place (2020), How Blue (2019), and El Playón (2018), the works reflect Molina’s longstanding preoccupation with issues of ecologies, spatial inequalities, land and landlessness, and displacement that is a result of forced migration. Using different fruits and plants such as recurring imagery of corn, gloomy landscapes, and raspberries, Molina evokes different emotions of home, belonging, and rootedness. She meditates on violent encounters with the land, including El Playón, the site of the San Salvador volcanic eruption of 1658 to 1671, and a dumping site for the right wing paramilitary death squad during the Salvadoran Civil War of 1979 to 1992. In the photographs, Molina confronts us with the limitations of keeping personal/domestic gardens due to limited access to land and how these limitations influence and necessitate economic gardening practices. By incorporating images of fabric in her photographs, Molina engages the contentious history of exploitation and abuse that is inherently embedded in the textile industry and in Salvadoran politics and histories. ( Text by and Curated by Dr. Chandra Frank and Dr. Portia Malatjie at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati. In view until August 6, 2023)
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