León Duval — Spatial Possibilities

In September 2022, in New York City during the New York Textile Month VII, and with our recently formed Colectivo de Palabreo (Elisa Lutteral, Lina Celis, Rubén Gómez and León Duval), we held the event MAIZ; biographical textiles through the lens of corn.

There, we aimed to propose a spatiality able to foster an intimate conversation between the corn, as a non-human agent, with human participants, as a collector of memories from the built environment. Therefore, we set a sensory experience that explored how our bodies account for notions of land, belonging, and domesticity by interacting manually with corn; food that integrates our research approach composing a crucial actor and medium to unfold Latinx identities. That event was made in collaboration with Factory Tamal, a family-owned restaurant that processes corn to make tamales, a core central-american meal. The event consisted of a group of strangers that entered the restaurant and sat down at a dinner table. Then, while eating tamales, a sculptural audio piece narrating multi-territorial corn-stories echoed in the room, and a performance started, showing how to process the corn husks used in the confection of tamales to create crocheted yarn, and initiating a workshop. Meanwhile, the participants crocheted the husks, they began interacting, learning, and sharing personal stories. The event took place inside and outside the restaurant, and while the workshop was happening in the interior, in a more intimate space, an informal conversation and gathering took place in the exterior, which was held by the rest of the collective. MAIZ I was a meaningful initiative where we explored the design of space as a ritual and acknowledged that the way we get intimacy in our relationships with the built environment matters. It was absolutely astonishing to see how different people could share and interact with each other, sharing experiences and stories, and learning from “the otherness”. Bringing along personal backgrounds or understandings, and by that combining different pieces of Latin America into a common but unusual ground in a place like NYC.

This event was covered in the following articles:

https://www.textilemonth.nyc/calendar-2022-nytm/maiz-biographical-textiles-through-the-lens-of-corn

https://loriweitznerassemblage.com/blog-1/2022/8/25/new-york-textile-month

https://peeljournalgsapp.cargo.site/Can-Corn-be-Architecture