This ritual embodies the bodies of water that delineate the border between México and the United States. Inspired by the border town of Los Algodones in Baja California, México, where many U.S. citizens travel for dental care, while just nearby lies "Presa Morelos", the dam that has kept the mouth of the Colorado River dry for over 50 years. Using materials imbued with profound spiritual meanings yet tied to local histories of extraction and control, like cotton, water, saliva, silicone, burnt sugar cane and copper, this piece engages with human and environmental oppresion, border politics and the cycles of consumption and depletion that shape these liminal spaces. Once fluid and uncontainable, these waters have been turned into artificial boundaries, their movements dictated by politics, their bodies restricted by dams, metal, concrete, and power ambition. In boca indomable, the body becomes a site of struggle, forced open yet unable to quench its thirst. The untamable mouth seeks to break free. Through this act, this ritual questions what it means to take, to withhold, and whether restoration is possible. At the end, the audience is invited to perform a communal bath and clean the waters with cotton.

Ritual performed during the opening of the MFA solo exhibition bocas indomables/untamable mouths, 2025, 20 min, USC Roski Graduate Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography by Pistor Orendain and Vicky Bye.