Cristina González:
Apapachando La Matria

form & concept | February 2024

Cristina González’s suspended installation Apapachando La Matria was the inaugural show in the Windox Box project space at Vladem Contemporary, the contemporary wing of the New Mexico Museum of Art. This reinterpretation of the exhibition, which was originally curated by NMMA Assistant Curator Katie Doyle, expanded the scale and interactivity of the display.

González writes, “Derived from the Nahuatl word papatzoa, apapachar is to caress, to hold with tenderness. In a beautifully, typically, México-magico, over-the-top, romantic poetry way, it also has been translated as ‘to caress with the soul.’ La matria is a neologism; the rematriated land of the self; which for me is an interior space, both private and rooted in the culturally-specific territory of ancestral and personal healing.”

“In this work, I hold with tenderness a space of ceremonia, where I imagine earth and sky meeting one another, a heady swirl of healing and prayer from the natural and celestial worlds, where a central figure is suspended inside pattern, shadow, color, shape; it’s a space that is at once familiar and difficult to grasp, formless yet clearly echoing form. Images are alternately revealed and hidden, a metaphor for what we remember of the past, and glimpse of the future.”

“Apapachando la Matria is also an offering to those who have been affected by the displacement and violation that has been enacted on the communities of what is now Santa Fe. What ceremonies do we need in order to heal displacement and loss? What invisible forces must we recover and hold so that future generations can experience joy, liberation, and belonging?”

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