Las Eras

Las Eras is a transmedia project that combines art, research, and community activations created by the Laboratory “MOIRA, Narrativas en Tránsito” (“Narratives in transit”). The project was conceived after the installation Esculpir el Silencio (Sculpting the Silence) by Uruguayan artist, Tamara Cubas. Esculpir el Silencio is a sonorous desert of 30 tons of salt inhabited by scattered stories of migrant women, creating an interactive, sensory experience.

In January 2023, looking for the local history of salt, we found the Cooperativa de Salineros, a salt farming cooperative, in Cuyutlán, Colima. They have produced salt since the 16 century and have kept alive the artisan tradition and production of salt. We have since begun to build relationships with the community there and to record their stories.

Las Eras is an audiovisual piece composed of three screens that express the relationship between the process of salt, ritual, and body. It was created in The Research-Creation Laboratory “Eras de un cuerpo mineral,” an educational ambiance in collaboration with ITESO Library, professors, and students from the undergraduate programs in Audiovisual Arts, Art and Creation, and Communication.

Las Eras has expanded to diverse narrative formats, languages, and materials in its transmedia narrative. Furthermore, it created processual, collaborative, and academic workspaces through discussions, the film program at ITESO, and critical essays that activate and connect strategies of research and knowledge with other existing projects.

The participatory embroidery projects Un Amuleto para una Ciudad (An Amulet for a City) and Un Amuleto para el Camino (An Amulet for the Way) also extended from Sculpting the Silence. This activation is an embroidery project with community members that makes little bags filled with salt to wish strength and protection to migrants. It was created in partnership with artist Tamara Cubas and the Hemispheric Encounters Mobilities Cluster.

The photographic exhibition curated by MOIRA, Un pueblo hecho de sal (A Town Made of Salt) is part of the visual record developed in 2020 by Juan Pablo Sandoval and Victoria Carvajal for the web-based exhibit of the same name. These images were donated to the Cuyutlán Salt Museum that belongs to the Cooperativa de Salineros, to contribute to the persistence of their memory.

All this is part of the research work, creation, and design of pedagogical experiences between various social actors: the academy, the community of salt workers, students, and interdisciplinary artists across México and the Americas.

Download the project PDF for the program and more information: Las-Eras-Expansion-Sal

Three large piles of salt in a salt field. A reflection of the blue sky and white clouds reverberates from the shiny ground.

From "Las Eras"

A black and white illustration of a truck and a mountain of salt. The text, in white font reads, "Un pueblo hecho de sal."

From "Un pueblo hecho de sal."