Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds moves between Lake Michigan and the volcanic terrain surrounding Popocatépetl and Paso de Cortés, tracing relationships among body and weather, breath and ash, erosion and maintenance, memory and place. Born in Mexico City and based in Chicago, Susy Bielak brings into dialogue two landscapes that have shaped her own life, the volcanic terrain surrounding Mexico City, where much of her family remains, and the shoreline of Lake Michigan, which has been her daily horizon for the past thirteen years. The work explores inner and outer weather, visualizing the interwoven strata of bodily, environmental, social, and political life.
Drawing from scientific image systems such as geological diagrams, bathymetric maps, hazard maps, and retinal scans, the work considers accumulation, instability, and the material traces left by environmental, political, and personal forces.
Over more than two years, a series of visits, conversations, shared excursions, and exchanges between Chicago-based artist Susy Bielak and Mexico City–based artist Nuria Montiel shaped the development of the project. Later conversations and fieldwork at Paso de Cortés brought Bielak’s longtime collaborator Fred Schmalz into the dialogue. References and observations spanning from the monitoring of Lake Michigan to records of Popocatépetl's exhalations circulated between the artists, creating unexpected correspondences between distant geographies and lived experiences. Passing between them like clouds, wind currents, and dispersed ash, these exchanges became a way of thinking across distance, geography, and lived experience.
Through a site-responsive installation including paintings on amate paper, visual poems, suspended broom forms, volcanic ash, window drawings, needlefelt works, and photographs documenting temporary actions, Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds considers how we navigate uncertainty and create moments of care, protection, and temporary order within shifting conditions.
Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds se mueve entre el Lago Míchigan y el terreno volcánico que rodea al Popocatépetl y al Paso de Cortés, rastreando las relaciones entre cuerpo y clima, aliento y ceniza, desgaste y mantenimiento, memoria y lugar. Susy Bielak, nacida en Ciudad de México y basada en Chicago, entabla un diálogo entre dos paisajes que le han dado forma a su propia vida, el terreno volcánico que rodea la Ciudad de México, donde aún permanece mucha de su familia, y la costa del Lago Michigan, que ha sido su horizonte por los últimos trece años. La obra explora el clima interno y externo, visualizando los estratos entrelazados de vida corporal, ambiental, social y política.
Basándose en sistemas de imágenes científicas como diagramas geológicos, mapas batimétricos, mapas de riesgo y escaneos de retinas, la obra aborda la acumulación, inestabilidad y los rastros materiales dejados por fuerzas ambientales, políticas y personales.
Por más de dos años, una serie de visitas, conversaciones, excursiones compartidas e intercambios entre Susy Bielak, artista basada en Chicago y la artista Nuria Montiel, basada en Ciudad de México, dieron forma al desarrollo del proyecto. Conversaciones y trabajo de campo posteriores trajeron al diálogo a Fred Schmalz, un colaborador de Bielak desde hace mucho tiempo. Circularon entre los artistas referencias y observaciones desde la vigilancia del lago Míchigan hasta los registros de las erupciones del Popocatépetl, creando inesperadas correspondencias entre las distantes geografías y experiencias vividas. Pasando entre ellos como nubes, corrientes de air y ceniza dispersada, estos intercambios se convirtieron en una forma de pensar que trasciende la distancia, la geografía y las experiencias vividas.
Por medio de una instalación adaptada al espacio que incluye pinturas sobre papel amate, poemas visuales, formas de escobas suspendidas, ceniza volcánica, dibujos en ventanas, obras de fieltro con aguja y fotografías que documentan acciones efímeras, Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds reflexiona sobre cómo nos enfrentamos a la incertidumbre y creamos momentos de cuidado, protección y orden temporal en medio de circunstancias cambiantes.
Susy Bielak is an artist and writer whose work explores migration, displacement, memory, and place. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, text, and video, she reimagines the social and political structures written into our environments.
Informed by her own diasporic experience, Bielak's work traces relationships between interior and exterior landscapes, connecting intimate experiences to larger environmental, political, and historical forces.
Her projects range in form, spanning from drawings made with her breath to videos staged in sites of scientific testing. Her collaborators have included writers in exile, bus drivers, social workers, choreographers, engineers, musicians, and scientists.
Bielak's work has been exhibited, collected, and published widely, including by the Museo Tamayo, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, New American Paintings, and Poetry Magazine. She received her MFA from the University of California San Diego and is Assistant Professor of Art at Lake Forest College, where she is currently a Mellon Fellow. She lives and works in Chicago.
