“A few examples demonstrate this trend more concretely, such as Doris Sommer’s use of the term ‘particularities’ in her introductory essay to an issue of the Modern Language Quarterly devoted to globalism. Sommer speaks favorably of what she refers to as (borrowing from Derrida) ‘untranslatable particularities’, ’as a renewed response to the pressures of dramatic ‘globalization’. But these particularities are further modified as ‘specificities of time and place’ and ‘particularities of literary context and strategy’, which carefully limits them to phenomena visible to and envisioned by the mastery of the critical gaze and not those that would interrupt that gaze itself with the possibility of another rhetorical point of departure.”
The Effects of the Nation: Mexican Art in an Age of Globalization, Carl Good

This piece was a response to questions around migration becoming a permanent state. Along these matters, arose a growing awareness on how different Latin cultures congregated in certain stores throughout the city as means to connect with their roots through either language or food. I can safely say wherever there’s a tortilla machine, there’s some kind of Latinhood around it. In my opinion, to settling migrants, these hubs become places of cultural resistance.

The fact tortilla machines manage to wander to cities around the world is not only a singular example of migrating technologies, it is also part of our mechanical heritage abroad. Tortillas, a circular plane of grinded corn has become a piece of Mexicaneity. By mixing clay and corn together, I wanted to create a more resilient version of a tortilla, one that lost its vulnerable and edible quality to transform it into a structural element, almost like a brick. This mixture was manufactured through a conventional tortilla machine to create three thousand clay and corn tortillas. These were then exported to New Orleans and finally inserted into a prefabricated structure. Why? Because for a migrant, temporary residence or settling means to leave the familiar way behind. It means to be incorporated within these defining structures but sometimes through certain traditions or the gathering of different Latin similarities is the way we stay particular, resisting the loss of our essence, even defiant towards globalization.

Special thanks to Belinda Flores Shinshillas, Joel Flores and his tortilla crew.

Mexican Consulate in New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana