“…through the process of creating these pieces, I noticed myself tapping back into familial practices to take care of oneself. These acts were so deeply embedded into everyday life that I did not question it or even acknowledge it as a practice. All I knew is that the women in my family are experts in transforming a toxic thing into something nourishing. They taught me how to turn poison into a meal… At this point, it is not about the poison or the meal. It's about the person consuming those things and their own process of transmutation.”

-Coco Villa

This exhibition is a collection of records, each an archive of its time and place, each an archive of the body, a record of presence, of absence, of embodiment. In garments, objects, installations, videos, and choreography, Coco Villa summons deep connections to legacy and offers views of possible futures. The collection is an invitation for spectators to become embodied with the work and its multiple points of entry, effectively becoming an extension of the work itself. The making hand, self-authorship, and collective agency weave into an embodied shared space, where we are summoned to transmute alongside the artist and where even the tiniest gestures reverberate with deeply personal, and uncannily universal, implications. The work is joyful and cautious, playful and constrained as Villa excavates and reframes, gathers and releases.

In these works Villa asks when, how, where, and why does the body remember? 

And they suggest we let our bodies respond. 

- lydia see

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