The Brooklyn Rail

I could smell Gala Porras-Kim’s work before I could see it. Granted, I’ve been told I have a particularly keen sense of smell, but the earthy aroma of her exhibition, The motion of an alluvial record, at Storefront for Art and Architecture is undeniable. The non-profit describes it as an “atmospheric installation,” a free-standing shed-like room inside the gallery that visitors enter by passing through flaps of plastic snapped together with magnets. Taking up most of this partitioned space is The motion of an alluvial record (all works 2024), a long, open vitrine that lends its name to the exhibition. Filled with clay from the wetlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, it’s this vitrine that gives the space a rich, minerally smell. Heightening the scent is the environment of the room itself, which is designed like a hothouse with a climate that mimics that of the Yucatán.

The motion of an alluvial record is part of a year-long, multi-sited project organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture that explores the relationships between water and land, using swamps as a conceptual structure to reveal the socioeconomic and ecological complexities of wetlands. Called “Swamplands,” the initiative has been underway throughout 2024 with research, programming, and exhibitions that focus on three sites surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, specifically Louisiana, Texas, and Yucatán. Porras-Kim’s show is the last of the three Swamplands exhibitions following presentations by Fred Schmidt-Arenales and Imani Jacqueline Brown earlier in the year.

The “atmospheric” quality of Porras-Kim’s show hits like a wave. While only 81 degrees Fahrenheit inside when I visited (the average in the Yucatán is 91), the temperature was far warmer than the air outside. At 84 percent, the humidity in the structure was stifling, forming heavy, wet air that seemed to stick to the skin. In creating this artificial environment, Porras-Kim highlights the climates in which institutions display artwork and objects. While in the typical museum model this would involve taking an object from its normal environment and bringing it into a dry, temperate climate indoors, Porras-Kim instead brings the context of the Yucatán into the space of the gallery, flipping the colonial practice inherent in the standard extractive model. In this light, she draws attention to the importance of questioning how culture is preserved and displayed and what it means to view objects in institutional settings.

Hanging at each end of the rectangular room is a sheet of plexiglass, including Mayan water lily serpent. Heavy drops of condensation streak the surface, revealing an image on the glass seen often in Mayan iconography of a long snake and water lilies. Porras-Kim incorporated an anti-fog material on this plexiglass, thus allowing the viewer to see the design, but for the sheet at the opposite end of the room, she did not and instead left the surface susceptible to a buildup of fog. The title, Rain portrait (Chaac’s lacrimatory), suggests the plexiglass might contain an image of the Mayan god of rain, though the humidity was so extreme, condensation completely covered the surface. With these pieces, the condensation itself becomes another material, one with life and agency as it clouds Rain portrait (Chaac’s lacrimatory) and streaks down Mayan water lily serpent, dripping quietly to the gallery floor.

Displaying Yucatán mud in a context similar to its normal climate allows the material to remain wet and visibly pliable. Viewing the rich mud, it’s hard not to think of Alice Aycock’s iconic sculpture Clay #2 (1971), for which she poured clay into plywood boxes on the ground, leaving the material to dry and shrink, thus forming deep cracks in its hard surface. Recalling a drought-stricken lake, the work offers a bleak reminder of the fragility of the natural world and the impact of the warming planet. Porras-Kim’s clay, by contrast, is full of vitality and life, the sediment retaining its capacity to move and change as opposed to Aycock’s, which is frozen in time. A newspaper published in conjunction with The motion of an alluvial record and distributed in the gallery reveals the importance of clay as a record of human and geological histories, and moisture as symbolic of the Maya viewpoint of time as being fluid and nonlinear. Were this piece to be displayed in an environment at odds with the tropical climate of the Yucatán, it would undoubtedly resemble Aycock’s work by the end of the show. While centering on the Yucatán Peninsula, Porras-Kim’s work also reflects broader museological issues of strict climate control requirements of (mainly Western) institutions, a topic of concern as conversations on sustainability in the art world have increased.

The motion of an alluvial record is remarkably simple, yet its ability to speak to complex institutional issues is profound. How often do visitors enter a gallery and question the setting, not just the physical structure but the temperature and humidity? While extreme weather or circumstances out of the ordinary might make these factors more apparent, the atmosphere inside an art space isn’t typically at the front of visitors’ minds. Maintaining a tropical climate as the outside weather turns increasingly colder might seem wasteful, but aren’t the often unnecessarily dry and cool environments of museums wasteful, as well? The context for Porras-Kim’s work is a part of the exhibition itself, one that is impossible to ignore. And yet, the contexts for all exhibitions are equally important. The motion of an alluvial record offers a reminder that institutions have remarkable power to contextualize the objects on display and shape a viewer’s understanding of culture.