half of two hungers II
in-situ installation
The Anderson, Richmond, Virginia, April 2023
Ceramic, clay slip, water, anaerobic compost, found objects, natural rubber hose.
The following is an excerpt from half of two hungers (print), a work that extends Lizalde’s sculptural practice into the realms of language. The text weaves personal experiences with broader cultural and historical narratives, forming a sensorial and psychological landscape through which the author consciously and subconsciously navigates.
Structured across twelve sections, from "Homes" to "The Belly of the Beast," rich with vivid imagery, spanning childhood scenes, familial relationships, rituals, and the process of navigating hybrid identities.
The work is marked by its intimate portrayal of personal memories, from the rural settings of her upbringing to the cultural dissonances encountered while adapting to life in different places. At its core, "Half of Two Hungers" is a meditation on duality.
The print version, scheduled for release in 2026, in collaboration with Mariana Parisca. The book is both a personal archive and a broader cultural critique, exploring themes of postcolonial identity, the body, and the ways in which the past manifests in the present.
i. homes [subtext]
home, was a dream where the stench of the male goat’s piss mixed with the smell of the wet polished concrete floor that looked like red tiles, wet from the drip from the roof caused by the avocado tree sponging the roof. The smell of my feet when I wore shoes with no socks, and that of an earthenware clay pitcher sweating water slowly.
home, was lifting a greasy bucket from under the kitchen sink to dump the water out back because the drainage was clogged. It was a tan-yellowish bucket, translucent; it felt like someone rubbed it with lard; it was flexible, like skin. Its circular form would bend to the shape of an eye with the pull of the metal handle, precariously dripping water at the sharp edges, like crying, if moved too abruptly. I balanced it carefully.
Home sometimes is the dream of a companion machine organism that slowly drips with control, mischief, and hesitancy, heavy like a baby but made of mud. Becoming unbecoming. Hair brushing the floor like when I sat on the couch upside down or swung on the swings too hard to feel my blood rush to my head.
She is the memory of my mother with a huge, swollen pregnant belly, hanging dripping clothes on the clothesline while I watched from the swing set. El Señor Columpio whistled songs to me with its old hinges and creepy smile, soothing me when I cried.
It was a vessel who was a horse and a frog and a couch-swing my grandfather built for the porch of the other ranch, the one in Zacatecas. A goat’s udder, coniferous and plump, and my own breast, the same.