Reflections from the artist

Origins & Endings brings together two projects: Notes on Biology and The Day I Destroyed the World, both collections developed with support from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico.

Notes on Biology is, metaphorically, the longest conversation I have ever had with my father.

It begins with his notes on biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and more, written during his youth at university, years before I was born. Within those notes I discovered fragments, words, and poetry that, once reinterpreted, gave me visions strong enough to explain everything he never explained to me: the origin of the universe, the formation of the seas, the creation of the first humans, sex, power, modernity, and profound human solitude.

The Day I Destroyed the World is a darker project, born from a desire to understand humankind’s constant need to destroy everything, the foundations of evil, and the origins of human violence… In the process I realized I was deceiving myself.

I only wanted to find culprits, and I did not dare to see that I myself have been both creator and destroyer, that I am only a tiny part of the countless cycles of creation and destruction that unfold on this planet. And that life, life itself, is a deranged force that devours and chews everything, grinding the entrails of its children only to later vomit them as fluids that feed millions of organisms, who in turn destroy others in order to survive in this endless feast called existence.

In the face of this macabre theater, the human being is but a fleeting whim, a trembling accident of fragile limbs who, terrified, invents stories, myths, religions, politics, and wars to justify a brief existence, fear, inevitable decay, and death.

And yet, we are still able to love. We can forget that we will die, and ignore the irrefutable fact that we will never escape from this place.

At this moment, I can only repeat the words of Alejo Carpentier, words that have resounded in my heart since youth and calm my anxiety whenever I come face to face with this truth.

“And he now understood that man never knows for whom he suffers and hopes. He suffers and hopes and toils for people he will never know, who in turn will suffer and hope and toil for others who will not be happy either, for man always longs for a happiness lying beyond the portion allotted to him.

But man’s greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is. In laying duties upon himself.

In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy.

For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trial.”

Origins & Endings is on view at PS707, September 12 to October 5, 2025.

This special exhibition is supported by Partners in Art.