Boogie Woogie (handmade & sensual)

Boogie Woogie (handmade & sensual) is part of a recent series, entitled Autodestrucción, which Abraham Cruzvillegas started in 2012 after having exhausted the propositions subsumed under the neologism autoconstrucción. Cruzvillegas had used this term for some years to describe his art, the roots of which lie in the improvised construction methods and techniques of his native Mexico City. A rural exodus led to the creation of self-built settlements in the area during the 1960s.

The unstable economic status of many of the migrants led them to build their own houses, usually without a foundation or a blueprint. The use of materials and construction techniques were mostly improvised, and people built their homes using what was readily available in the area.

Questions of identity, its relationship to sub- and counterculture, and how it is constructed, inherited and displayed through fashion and subculture play an important role in the dialectical shift to Autodestrucción. Works such as Boogie Woogie (handmade & sensual) consist of a series of hanging and freestanding sculptures made of rebar, wire, feathers, jewelry chains, textiles and curing strips of beef. These works are largely informed by the artist’s interest in zoot-suiters (or Pachucos, as they are known in Mexico) and their Second World War French counterparts, Zazous. These subcultural groups had a markedly rebellious nonconformity, which they made visible through their sartorial excess. As is often the case with Cruzvillegas’ work, his interest has autobiographical roots: his great uncle was a zoot-suiter jazz musician who lived in France during World War II.

As Cruzvillegas learned in his research, attire during this time was a way to embody resistance and to defy conformity. Social rebellion was marked by apparel, but when these ideologies failed, the style faded away as the protagonists changed and reverted to some other reality.