Bucarolito was the exhibition and first collective action of the project with the same name, the fourth stage of the long-term project litofagos. It took place at the Emerson Dorsch Gallery in Little Haiti, Miami from 6th of September to 6th of October 2019, curated by Tyler Dorsch.
The project Bucarolito looks at the mouth and the stone, all the ways the human mouth serves as a threshold between an individual and the world at large. Similarly, it contemplates the many ways stones and their particulates represent site, the earth, the material universe, and its non-living scaffolding.
The action at the center of each of borragán’s experiences is to ingest, to inscribe and reveal an image through this action. This is alchemy. For, in his environment of magenta phyto light and dusty air, groups ingest stones together. In this case, they eat ‘búcaros’, which are small, unfired clay vessels eaten by the Spanish Aristocracy in the 17th century. Clay and earth ingestion is an ancient practice.
During his residency at the gallery in Miami’s Little Haiti, Borragán and his collaborators: Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Orlando Plein, Blanca Pujals and Miami-based ceramicist Kira Tippenhauer took up a cornerstone of the project, with the making of a series of ‘bucaros’ from local clay. Groups were invited to participate in a private collective action and performative ingestion inside his installation at the gallery. By ingesting the clay, they absorbed the place and became a part of it. Distinctions between inside and outside break down.
