El Cruce

The New Mexico Museum of Art
September 20, 2023–September 22, 2024

Oswaldo Maciá’s sound sculpture, El Cruce, explores the nature of movement and transgression. The title can be translated in English as “the cross” or “the crossing.”

The words in both languages are derived from the Latin crux, which refers to the instrument of torture on which people were executed.

Movement is fundamental to life and without it there would be stagnation. Yet, something happens when the line traced by our movement crosses another. Moving through life, we can cross paths with others. We can cross the line. Still, at other times, we can arrive at a crossroads.

Maciá’s sculpture engages with the generative nature of these junctures—the points where lines meet.

His sketchbooks explore the intersection of colors as a visual analog to the meeting of sounds in El Cruce.

Visitors encounter El Cruce as an acousmatic wall of sound, meaning that visitors cannot determine the source of the sound. Organized in an octagonal composition, each of the eight audio channels engage in a crosscutting dialogue of migratory winds, bats, and insects. The composition also includes a performance by Iban Sanz and Lorentxo Dolara of the txalaparta, a Basque percussion instrument.

The wind recordings were captured in the deserts of New Mexico and the American Southwest.

The calls of bats and insects were captured throughout the Americas. Sounds from the Santa Fe Railyard punctuate the piece and reminds us of the city’s history as a waypoint on journeys across the Southwest.

Presented at:
The New Mexico Museum of Art -

Sant Fe. NM. US.

Collections:

The New Mexico Museum of Art