Steel
144 x 234 x 120 in
Originally installed at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Courtesy the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Co-commissioned by Storm King Art Center, EMPAC–Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at The New School. The sculpture was created in part during the artist’s residency at Atelier Calder, Saché, France.
Photo by Paul Gallo
About
Ilopango, the Volcano that Left (2023) is a speculative reconstruction of an ancient volcano that erupted in the sixth century C.E. in what is now El Salvador. Working in steel, Cortez fashions her work by hand, improvising to create undulating surfaces and organic forms that echo the landscape. In this work, Cortez considers the ash deposited by the eruption, an event known as Tierra Blanca Joven, as part of the sacred Mayan underworld. Cortez imagines how the eruption’s resulting migratory patterns reverberate across time, drawing a connection to events such as the movement of the Maya or her own migration amid the Salvadoran Civil War in 1989. Reinforcing nature’s disregard for human boundaries, Cortez explains, “Lava flows under the volcanic range that unites my two homes, Los Angeles and San Salvador. The Underworld is not divided by these borders.”
Unveiled for the first time on the West Coast, Ilopango, the Volcano that Left was made by the artist between Atelier Calder in Saché, France and her Los Angeles studio. It was exhibited at Storm King Art Center in New York; navigating the tidal waters of the Hudson River over the JJ Harvey Fireboat; and at the Experimental Media Center for Performing Arts (EMPAC) at RPI in Troy, NY. Cortez explains, “In part, its travels are speculative. They are an effort to trace some of the trajectories followed by Tierra Blanca Joven centuries ago. They are meant to imagine migration as part of the future and not only as part of our present.” As its title suggests, Ilopango, the Volcano that Left moves with a sense of agency, disrupting distinctions between here and there, and past and present, as it charts its own future.
Location
This sculpture is on display in the Garden Theatre.
