MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio

About

Aparicio’s materially inventive practice is informed by the Salvadoran communities in Los Angeles in which he was raised, decolonialist discourse, and an approach to ecological justice as a form of social justice. The foundation of Aparicio’s practice is “total material non-neutrality,” which the artist initially realized through his Caucho (Rubber) series (2016–ongoing). MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio showcases a range of Caucho works, in which Aparicio casts the trunks of Los Angeles trees, frequently the ficus, slated for removal in rubber—the internal fluids of the Castilla elastica, a species native to El Salvador. The resulting impressions are textured with residual bark, exhaust particles, and graffiti marks. The casts couple with collages of found clothing and ephemera from the Pico-Union, Highland Park, and Westlake neighborhoods of Los Angeles, and are embellished with painted references to the presence and expression of the Central American diaspora in popular culture and the built environment. In this body of work, Aparicio invokes rubber’s history as a vital pre-Hispanic Indigenous technology and its status as a material of imperialist trade, giving shape to immigrant communities’ connections to land and place. At the core of Aparicio’s practice is a commitment to the cultural and scientific knowledge of often marginalized and even vilified Central American immigrant communities, making MOCA’s location in downtown Los Angeles, the heart of the Salvadoran diaspora, particularly resonant.