‘There are no innocent encounters in Mexico City. All these coincidences are just rendez-vous, arranged for later.
I met Alma in Mexico City in February 2022, during the Mexico City art week. I already knew her work through social networks and had found it smart and witty, precise and playful. Alma embodies it perfectly. During this first meeting, I asked - imposed - that she makes me a bathroom one day. I've always dreamed of taking baths in a big ceramic ashtray, like a little apocalypse. Turns out she's working on it these days but not for me, despite my jealous eyes.
Alma currently has an exhibition at El cuarto de máquinas, a space for collaboration and exploration initiated by Hilario Galguera in Berlin in 2008 and presented by Galería Hilario Galguera in Mexico City. The exhibition titled For dust we are, and to dust we shall return, showcases nine of her newest hand sculptures alongside four of her well known ashtrays, but this time in an extra large scale. As an artist, Alma has developed her practice of trompe-l'oeil through ceramics, sailing between light and shadow, in a cloud of extinguished cigarettes. However, very different aspects of her creativity are revealed, including an underlying poetry that invited me to walk with Alma in the development of her creative thought.
I always have the fantasy of the moment when creativity bursts forth, when the place we had tried to relegate it to becomes too small and though without a specific medium, requires dedication. For some, it appears as fatality or destiny, for others it takes other shapes. It is always interesting to observe to what extent creativity can take a low voice, give way to family or societal conventions, crush under the weight of obligations but never, never flinches. It knows that one day it will be the breeding ground for a revolt, a rebirth in suspense, a day when everything becomes obvious, by dint of sowing meaning over the years.
The question is also: what should our creativity be used for? And how can we meet its essence so that it becomes art?
Alma, after a few months in art school, decided to stop - how can you put grades on the expression of creativity? She then moved into hospitality, becoming the right hand of a member's club manager. The creative call became more insidious: a whole range of creative people passed before her, conversing, debating, creating together.
