🌎 ESPAÑOL // ENGLISH
Ines Verdugo - Pantano
Cocodrile-Woman Tears
Why does the crocodile cry?
For several months now, Inés Verdugo has shared her life with a crocodile. At times, the crocodile prowls through the rooms; at others, it remains motionless in contemplation. It accompanies Inés in her creative processes and in her everyday activities. “I used to live in an estuary,” it whispers in her ear, “where fresh waters meet the salty sea. Now I live in a swamp: between stagnant water and my salty tears lies the entrance to the underworld.” When she holds it in her arms—its jaws open and legs tense—the artist transforms into a crocodile-woman.
Isn’t it the rain that fertilizes?
In a zoo in Costa Rica, isolated from others of its species, lives the virgin-crocodile. This summer it laid 14 eggs, one of which contained a perfectly formed fetus that, although it did not manage to hatch, possessed 99.9% of its mother’s genetic material. The virgin-crocodile became pregnant in solitude, without a mate, driven by the desire to reproduce. It is the first recorded case of facultative parthenogenesis in the Crocodylidae family—for some, a miracle of self-preservation; for others, an anomaly of Jurassic temporality.
I don’t know why the crocodile cries either.
Inés’s crocodile has become a “transitional object.” As in her previous projects, the artist engages with a material element through processes of active listening and imagination, freeing it from its previous lives and endowing it with its own relational stories. To develop these new narratives, the artist attends to her transitional object and takes note of the memories, tales, and desires it whispers in her ear. In Pantano (Swamp), Inés focuses on a taxidermy piece to unravel the symbolic dimension of the crocodile figure and reweave it with a crochet needle. The works that make up the exhibition trace the birth and development of the crocodile-woman, functioning as a second skin composed of colorful crocheted scales.
If my children didn’t see me, I would cry too.
With their powerful jaws, crocodiles do not chew—they bite and swallow, shaking their prey until it is torn apart. The jaws of a mother-crocodile are both transport chambers and crushing machines. To move her newborns, the mother carries them inside her mouth. Open, it is a safe cradle; closed, a tunnel with no exit.
In any case, I still don’t know why the crocodile cries.
In Pantano, hands become claws and snouts become lips. The new life of Inés’s crocodile unfolds throughout the exhibition. Allusions to the maternal concept in Lacanian psychoanalysis enter into dialogue with a message of planetary ecological urgency: Mother Nature, with her great crocodile mouth, may devour her children at any moment. Through its inverted, transparent eyelids, the crocodile cries. Perhaps for its wild memories that resist domestication. Perhaps for the maternal ravage that keeps it suspended between water and land. Surely, for its own survival.
*The titles of each section come from Inés Verdugo’s notebooks and functioned as catalysts for ideas. Therefore, this is a collaboratively written text.