INTERAFFECT
Sofia Ayarzagoitia, Ana Barbara Caballero, Jose Luis Diaz, Sulamit Elizondo, Hector Falcon, Mirasol González, Esteban Huacuja, Francisco Larios, Raymundo Sesma Damian Suarez, and Fabian Ugalde
Heart Ego extends gratitude to the Cervecería Principia for trusting us with their incredible space, to McCoy Gallery for their support, and to the friends of the gallery who made this exhibition possible: Hugo Salinas, Jorge Matuk, Veronica Gonzalez, Paco Acosta, Hector Mejia, Morena Mia, Eugenio Lee, Cesiah García, Guillermo Hernandez.
Installation view, Sala Principal
Works (from left to right) by Sulamit Elizondo, Marisol González, José Luis Díaz
In his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton proposed the idea that the universe can be described in an elegant cause-and-effect framework. Yet, further scientific research has uncovered a reality far more complex. The concept of interaffect allows us a glimpse into such non-linear causality. The industrial setting of the Principia Brewery offers a unique opportunity for a dialogue between various artists. Scattered throughout the plant, the works invite the visitors to assume accidental connections between past and present, things afar and things up close.
The term interaffect was used by philosopher Eugene Gendlin (1926 - 2017) to describe a constant process of people influencing each other. The concept discards the view that we, humans, interact with the environment in a linear way, like a computer that first receives an input, analyzes it, and then produces an output. Our bodies (and the world around them), Gendlin argued, are not mere containers collecting input from the environment; our bodies are themselves an interaction with everything that surrounds them. In such a reality, cause and effect constantly switch places. “[In martial arts] it is difficult to say which is my move or the other’s move. The happening move is each time both, each being a result of one’s responsive organization, one whole process” (Shoeller & Dunaetz, 2018).
The exhibition examines different aspects of the human condition through the lens of interaffect, from human communication to our relationship with the world. On the most fundamental, personal level of all the artists presented in the show is the work of Sofia Ayarzagoita. For Ayarzagoita, interaffect is the method of work and the main subject in her photographs. Documenting the lives of the immigrants, the artist intentionally states her presence in the picture. The resulting work is not just a narrative about longing for a better life; it is also a statement about the longing for the human connection that does not break under the harshest circumstances.
Zooming out from a inter-personal interaction, we see interaffect at play when we ponder the limitations of our freedom vis-à-vis the world. If I am influenced by everything, are any of my decisions actually mine? The expressive acrylic paintings by Sulamit Elizondo, where personal and mundane are interwoven on a corporeal level with the intensity of a classical myth, depict the search for individual freedom through a stronger connection with the world. Perhaps humanity as a whole is seeking freedom in the same way: to learn and understand the universe so well, only to break free from its burdening limitations. The glass house photographed by Ana Barbara Caballero, on the opposite, suggests that those limitations are illusions, and the walls we imagine between inside and outside, ourselves and the world, are made of glass.
Through her latest body of work present at the exhibition, Marisol González demonstrates the harmony that can break through once the minds work in unison, free from subjective limitations. Her beehive sculptures, woven by hand, praise a quiet collective work that slowly but surely move the progress further through connection and mutual understanding.
Works by Sulamit Elizondo (top) and Ana Barbara Caballero (bottom), installation view
Looking at the technological advancement through the lenses of interaffect yields some pessimistic thoughts as well. Just as our present often recontextualizes our past, the technological modernity of our species does not necessarily elevate animalistic instincts, instead, it recontexutalizes them constantly. The circulating ideas of “dark enlightenment”, accompanied with sprouting technologies of mass surveillance and mass extermination are products of such recontextualization of our animalistic nature. The progress itself becomes a danger. Locking together three car doors in his Intersección sculpture, Héctor Falcón does not only warn us about the illusional safety of the automobile but also about the romanization of tragic death, a direct influence of the mass media on the Western culture. In line with it, Fabian Ugalde’s intervention into the portrait of Kim Jong Un raises a question of political power over the cultural discourse in the Walter Benjamin’s world of infinite reproduction. The woven canvases of Damián Suárez explore the influence of armed exploitative political regimes on art (as in his Serie Cinetica) and the influence of the monumental architecture on those who inhabit it (his Piramidales series).
Works by Damián Suárez, Héctor Falcón, Fabián Ugálde, Marisol González, installation view
As we move our interaffected focus from contemporary culture to humanity’s history at large, the works of Francisco Larios appear as a monument to the history’s interconnectedness. His combinations of ancient spiritual symbols and labyrinths hint at hidden influences that comprise our past and, consequently, all of us. Appealing to the ancient beliefs found in a modern mind, Esteban Huacuja creates portals that seem to blend mandalas and Aztecs’ calendars to bring the sense of timelessness of the infinitely interconnected world. For Larios and Huacuja, time is only linear in close proximity. At a further distance, it becomes a mesh where each point is never in the unreachable past, only a sight away from being discovered and experienced.
UNTITLED, 2025
by Esteban Huacuja
At the total scale of things, the interaffect lens returns us to ourselves and questions how we perceive being. Raymundo Sesma approaches our perception of space, as if allowing us to be mesmerized with how falliable and fragile our optics are. Yet, for José Luis Díaz there was a profound value in these illusions, as we owe to them the rare glimpses into the hidden connections of the world. His photographic works reveal a hidden coherence of seemingly accidental connections that fill our lives. Yet, instead of being overwhelmed by these constant discoveries, his works bring us back to the curiosity towards the world.
Instead of being overwhelmed by these constant discoveries, INTERAFFECT proposes a curiosity towards the connected world in a state of constant flux. It proposes that we are not a product of the processes happening inside and outside of us; we are the very perpetual process itself.
Anton Meshkov
