Morir es Vivir / Vivir es Morir
A multi-part project made through recorded conversations with people across New Orleans about grief, loss, mortality, rebirth, healing, and hope. Presented across the New Orleans Museum of Art and the New Orleans Public Library during the Covid-19 pandemic, the work asked: what must die, institutionally, personally, relationally, or belief-wise, and what might thrive in its wake?
At NOMA, Morir es Vivir centered on a seating sculpture I built for recorded conversations with participants. Sitting with me inside the museum, people spoke about grief, death, rebirth, and the systems, beliefs, and institutions they felt needed to end. These conversations became a sound and light installation in the Great Hall. At the Main Library, Vivir es Morir became a public companion work: a sculptural listening structure with audio, zine, and space for collective reflection.
While the museum presentation was shaped by institutional limits and censorship, the library version held the work in a free, accessible civic space and allowed the censored material to return through three audio channels: the intended work, the words I fought to keep, and the words that were banned completely.
Together, the installations formed a cycle of regeneration between museum and library, grief and imagination, death and living. The project later expanded into <> <> (Morir es Vivir), a translucent vellum publication made during the 2022 Paper Machine Residency. Combining drawings, photographs, and collected language from community conversations, the book holds a collective authorship of a period of time during the pandemic, moving through inheritance, housing, labor, fossil fuels, prison, revolution, family, and imagination.
Morir es Vivir, 2021
Seating sculpture, 1-to-1 recorded conversations
Contemporary Art Gallery, New Orleans Museum of Art
Morir es Vivir, 2021
sound and light installation
Great Hall, New Orleans Museum of Art
Vivir es Morir, 2021
Sculptural listening installation, audio
New Orleans Public Library
Vivir es Morir, 2021
Sculptural listening installation, audio zine
New Orleans Public Library
<> <> (Morir es Vivir), 2022
Publication on translucent vellum
Antenna Paper Machine Residency
