Sitios-Reversos (El otro lado del Charco)

Sitios Reversos is a collective initiative in San Salvador and some extended locations where the intention is to revive abandoned buildings for a last ovation with an ephemeral exhibition.

The installation here by Erika Pirl was a walkable text, in the center stair case of the building where as you read the vinyl cut out letters you also must take steps to the next level of the building, inviting you to displace yourself in the space The text is a tribute to mothers and daughters who face migration as a separation challenging personal existence and the sense of the word ¨Home¨. The text we read as we go around the steps that those we read as we go up the spiral stair case are from a repeated series that Erika places in different locations and has read allowed in different performances so placing them here in the ¨Sitios¨ exhibition are more of a situación of a personal mantra.

reflecting on how if the wound is not healed the words are still loaded.

It Reads:

- If the story were told by the tiger instead of the hunter?..... how would the story be?

As you would walk up each stair it reads.

I ran into a sign of home the other day on the other side of the giant puddle, with my mother we always say this joke we say one day I did a crazy thing I jumped over a big puddle you know Then I couldn’t jump back again The puddle had grown too much by the time I turned back around My atlantic puddle was keeping me away She says sometimes it shrinks dry again Then I can jump across easily but most of the time it is too wide to jump and too deep to swim. When it shrinks of course, something has to grow Nothing is free in this world but everytime I do get farther away from what once had been home to me then I started building a home for myself many of them everywhere I’d go and everywhere i’d be this way I couldn’t lose myself anymore ¨

The Stair case is protected by 4 pillars with 4 brass plated plaques that read memories from a time in Mexico (my childhood) ..... in reference to how monuments would be signeled or memorial plaques.

they read

1 ) the definition fo pocha is not to be - nor here nor there nor this nor that - but to be fully more than one identity in one body to be fully able to switch at any time. (pocha is a derogatory term for spanglish speakers. or children of mixed race parents.)

2) do you remember the women of the calle regina the knitters and quilters - if you pas by today you can still see them kitting as a circle and praying for us.

3) Amaranto is a survival plant that has survived the burnings our our grandmothers, she came back though the cracks in the cement and gave us life again.

4) the work tlasonsonatle is nahuatl for music and it has become spanish for the horn we honk when we want the the other to stop , aka (noise) ¿why is that ?