Serpentina, 2021, wind instrument made of high temperature ceramic

Vica Pacheco »Animacy«

Mexico City, June 22, 2023 - June 23, 2023

PERFORMANCE

Galerie Nordenhake Mexico is pleased to present Vica Pacheco's performance Animacy or a Breath Manifesto in the gallery's main space. Her project consists of creating her own whistling instruments by combining traditional processes with new technologies, such as 3D-modeling, 3D-printing, and industrial design techniques. The purpose is to experiment with their sonic potential in a full range of variations of shapes and sounds. Pacheco found it pertinent to bring together these «archaic» methods with new technologies. However, it is important for her to continue creating them in clay.

Pacheco's practice revolves around her indigenous roots and syncretic culture (the contemporary Mexican culture). Mesoamerican people perceived and comprehended the world as dynamic and transforming, as a field of relations between beings of all kinds. One part of her cultural heritage is based on these beliefs. She is fascinated by pre-Columbian musical instruments as they are a synthesis of a complex system of beliefs that her ancestors wove, and which can be qualified as animistic. Taking this as a starting point, she drew her own path, fabulating with these objects, and crafting new meanings around them.

Vica Pacheco was born in Oaxaca in 1993, and lives and works in Brussels. In her multifaceted practice she combines electroacoustic music, sound art, video animation and sculpture. Her performance »Animacy Or A Breath Manifesto« emerged from an investigation into pre-Columbian instruments made from ceramics. This resulted in a series of marvelous whistle-sculptures that open up an entire new sonic universe, in which breathing, organicity and energy are central elements. In doing so, Pacheco builds upon ancient musical and ritual practices as well as mythological meanings. She presented her work in the 2022 edition of Hacer noche in Oaxaca, curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose and Dea Lopez.