Installed during the exhibition Oficios comunes: Metabolismo urbano de saberes in collaboration with the Peruvian and Mexico-based architect Giacomo Castagnola, Casa Vecina, Mexico City, 2014.
This works examines the widely available cotton textile produced and known in Mexico as Jerga textile, the woven fabric is used as a dishrag or floor mop. The material is essentially thick cotton produced in different colors with simple striped patterns. It is very common to find a jerga on the floor at the entrance of a shop or a house, so visitors can wipe their dirty shoes.
This object and its location represent an “edge” a transition between the public (sidewalk) and private or “semi- public space”. I have always found a deep interest in crochet and found similar connections with this domestic medium in the company of Mexican women who several times a week meet at the public space at a bench in the city center of Mexico City to crochet together. I took the formal technique of crochet and magnified the weaving of my ‘textile’ by using uncut jerga cotton material and assembled it into a large platform extended on the floor.
