Elusive Earths Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione INTERNATIONAL GALLERY PRIZE NADA NYC 2018 Elusive Earths by Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione’s is a joint research and evolving hybrid production surrounding the practice of clays with forgotten origins, largely centered on geophagy—the ingestion of edible soils, across the globe, and in an archeological depth of time. Since 2014, the research has looked at terra sigillata, terra preta, and pan de tierra bendita, among other rare clays, spanning an expansive geography from the small island of Lemnos in Greece, to Colombia, to Oaxaca, Mexico to Esquipulas, Guatemala. From the retailing and consumption of drugs, therapeutic products and forgery in antiquity, body-branding, stamping to metamorphosis, the work explores the performativity of the extraction of natural resources and the moral economies in pharmacological panacea. A kind of world assemblage and information circuit which itself is embedded in various levels of cultural catalyzing forces: discoveries, trade, standardization processes, the shaping of local practices and the interlaced circulations of knowledge. For NADA International Gallery Prize NYC, photography is included from the CIRMA archives in Antigua, Guatemala as well as a “Tierra de Chalma” fettuccine sculpture and a grid “brasero” wall work which follows the artists’ vernacular use of grid and grill structures. The piece is a metallic interlocked customized iron grid/grill commonly employed in Oaxacan street kitchens. Elusive Earths has held research in Greece and Latin America, involving an extensive amount of actors including artists, craftsmen, anthropologists, science historians, archaeological scientists, geologists, and more, taking further inventory of ingestible clays and the imaginaries created around them – as a means to look further at our vested belief in their truth and to ruminate on potent pharmacological convictions in an effort to expose a point of vulnerability within an economy seeking to commodify the longing for a cure.

Elusive Earths -   Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, Installation at NADA NYC  (2018)

Elusive Earths

Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, Brasero/ grill, Iron grill /painting   (2018)

Elusive Earths

Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, Brasero/ grill, Iron grill /painting   (2018)

Elusive Earths

Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, Brasero/ grill, Iron grill /painting   (2018)

Elusive Earths   -    Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione,  Dirty pasta (2018)

Raw earth pasta, serving plate

Variable dimensions

Unique piece

2014: pure Zeolite, Griva 5 20-22 um, Griva 9 20-22 um, Thessaloniki

2018: edible tierra santa or holy earth base from Chalma, Mexico

2014-2018

Elusive Earths

Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione

 

Clay Face poster, (2018)

UNKNOWN AUTHOR

San Juan de Gaspar

Caserio Llano de San Gaspar de la Aldea Timushan, Esquipulas, Chiquimula

July 1987

Archive Oscar Horst

Fototeca Guatemala, CIRMA

(Código de Referencia: GT-CIRMA-FG-019-001-002-004-25)

This work does not represent the opinions of CIRMA. The contents displayed and realization are responsibility of the author.

Digital fine art print

60 x 40 cm, 24 x 16 inches

 (2018)

Elusive Earths -   Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, Installation at NADA NYC  (2018)

All images courtesy of the artists and Parallel Oaxaca

Parallel Oaxaca Calle Santo Tomás 123 esq. José López Alavez Barrio Xochimilco 68040 Oaxaca, México  paralleloaxaca@gmail.com www.paralleloaxaca.com