Autorretrato queriendo ser Fray Tomás González y escuchando abajeños con la banda de Zacán, incapaz de comunicar la frustración de no poder reconocerme como un narciso iracundo, pobre, obediente, casto y para acabarla de chingar, desplazado

In his work, which includes sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Abraham Cruzvillegas honors the unpretentious poetics of the precarious lifeworlds built under stark economic constraints. Repurposing discarded, collected, and foundobjects, his sculptures challenge traditional conceptions of artmaking, relying on improvisation, collaboration, and learning. Cruzvillegas primarily uses available materials and resources based on the location and circumstances at hand. Perhaps his most famous series, “Autoconstrucción”—or self constructing, as the artist calls it in English in order to highlight the concept’s psychological implications—roots his sculptural practice in a methodology of DIY assemblage. Cruzvillegas’s works result from highly personal attachments, and their materials and subjects reveal the artist’s collaborative, philosophical, and ethical commitments.

In this work, Cruzvillegas comes to terms with his shortcomings in the face of the admirable deeds of Fray Tomás González, a Franciscan friar and migrants’ rights activist who operates a shelter for migrants called La 72 in Tenosique, in southeastern Mexico. The organized crime groups that control the flow of migrants along the Guatemalan border have targeted González for his peaceful and legitimate work in defense of human rights. As the title intimates, Cruzvillegas contemplates the friar’s remarkable work, while listening to traditional Mexican folk music and realizing that he is also a “displaced narcissist” in need of the friar’s counseling. Made in and for an exhibition in the city of Zapopan, Mexico, and using materials found in the rubble there, the work is also a nod to the artist’s father, who was connected to Zapopan’s Franciscan convent.

(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "Abundant Futures", C3A, Córdoba, 2022)