Powerful metaphors in folklore and storytelling, ficus trees are often seen as symbols of resilience and adaptability. They embody themes of survival and transformation. In many Latin American traditions, they are associated with protection and shelter. Their expansive canopies provide shade and refuge, making them natural markers for social gatherings. These trees are also celebrated for their roles in maintaining biodiversity and supporting various ecosystems. This ecological importance is reflected in cultural narratives that emphasize the interconnectedness of nature and human life, reinforcing ficus trees\u2019 significance beyond the practical benefits they bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio,<\/em> exhibition view, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2024.
Photo: Jeff McLane, courtesy of
The Museum of Contemporary Art at MOCA, Los Angeles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Aparicio harnesses these complex and rich symbolic and ecological strands to comment on the enduring strength of marginalized communities in the face of systemic oppression and environmental degradation. Both South American species have been familiar staples in the LA landscape for decades, especially in disadvantaged Latinx communities, although their presence is now usually deemed undesirable. More often than not, the strong root systems of the mature trees crumble concrete and break up sidewalks. Many are now being uprooted and discarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aparicio sees the stories of these trees as a metaphor for how immigrant communities have been treated on American soil. The trees have become a nuisance, just as the South American labourers who were brought into the United States unlawfully to support the economy in the wake of the Second World War were later marginalized and deported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Central to the poignancy of Aparicio\u2019s exhibition is his relationship with process and materials. The totality of his body of work is deeply concerned with conceptions of truth and indexicality. Through a complex process involving rubber casting, he creates highly detailed mappings of the trees\u2019 skins. He calls this process \u201ctotal material non-neutrality\u201d for good reason. The scars, the carvings, the rough texture\u2014the overall abrasiveness of his surfaces\u2014is rich with testimonies of lives lived. The unforgiving indexicality, akin to the poignant fidelity that only a death mask can reveal, portrays invisible networks of intricate and fraught coexistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/web_mai_Aloi_Eddie-Rodolpho_Aparicio_015v2.jpg\")
MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio,<\/em> exhibition view, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2024.
Photo: Jeff McLane, courtesy of
The Museum of Contemporary Art at MOCA, Los Angeles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Silent statements, monumental relics: each piece makes an unequivocal claim of truth. Aparicio\u2019s material of choice reinforces this veracity. Rubber, a highly versatile vegetal matter extracted from trees, once tapped, takes the form and preserves the imprint of other objects. An ancient technology discovered by indigenous peoples, natural rubber, as used by Aparicio, is akin to an intimate voice that emerges from the past in order to interpret the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simultaneously deeply personal and collective, Aparicio\u2019s tree skins are the geological sedimentations of many forces, agents, and time-frames\u2014a concerted effort to which, from a humble and self-aware perspective, he often claims to have contributed relatively little. Highly invested in new materialist ideas, he often talks about his relationship with rubber as a collaboration in which following the material leads him onto a journey of discovery; his art is a membrane through which the unprocessed rawness of reality can be grasped and negotiated. In part, his task is that of a transcriber. He likes to stay close to the script that others have written while branching off into ethical and political dimensions that relate to his ethnicity and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here lies the true expressive force of his work\u2014the palpable impression that as we stand in front of one of his tree skins, we are confronted with much more than just an artwork that encapsulates the artist\u2019s vision: an enormity of voices, encounters, collusions, and narratives all manifesting together, intertwined and inseparable. The effect is at first overwhelming, yet each work draws the observer in with the intimacy of its intricate texturization\u2014at once realistic and abstract, tree bark and distant land, effigy of livingness and transfiguration of innumerable multitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio,<\/em> exhibition views, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2024.
Photos: Jeff McLane, courtesy of
The Museum of Contemporary Art at MOCA, Los Angeles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
This semantic complexity is heightened by the incorporation of found clothes, anonymous witnesses, discarded, shed skins\u2014remnants of true lives: these colourful garments insistently gesture toward registers of vulnerability and loss. The interconnectedness of natural and human vicissitudes suggests that the stories embedded in the bark are integral to understanding broader socio-political narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The indissoluble bond that ties social to environmental justice thus emerges as a central theme. The destruction of natural habitats and the exploitation of resources and peoples in Latin America are linked to past and present colonial and neo-colonial practices and ideas. Thus, Aparicio critiques the ongoing injustices faced by Indigenous and local communities, urging viewers to consider the broader implications of ecological destruction. People come and go, and the memory of their existence might vanish into the whirl of media cycles that take note of them only as a faceless multitude. The displacement and marginalization of communities can be easily erased but the scars left on the living will continue to tell their story for much longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An author and curator specializing in the history and theory of photography, representations of nature, and materiality in art, Giovanni Aloi has edited and authored more than ten books. He is the editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture<\/em> and the University of Minnesota Press series Art after Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n