Miga
(Crumb)
Small-format sculpture + performance
created from the call of CISMA within their collective traveling group exhibition: SHAPING THE VOID in response to the DANA storm (Valencia).
Started on February 7, 2025.
CISMA, Valencia, Spain
(www.cisma.art)
Material: wet paper pulp, saliva, vegetable glue.
Photos: Toni Calderón, Lluis Salvador, Ana Veintimilla, NEA.
Miga is my personal contribution to the collective exhibition project Shaping the Void created by CISMA—an itinerant exhibition that has travelled through several towns in the Valencian Community.
Within the project, I created a small-scale sculpture: a ball made from the paper pulp of books damaged during the flooding that struck the Valencian Community on 29 October 2024, known by the acronym DANA.
In addition to the ball on display, I produced nearly a thousand balls, using all the paper pulp entrusted to me, which I employed during the performance.
The performance consisted of moving among the visitors during the various openings and, without their knowledge or awareness, slipping a ball into the space between their neck and clothing—so that they might feel a small discomfort, a subtle disturbance capable of recalling what had happened, ensuring it would not be forgotten.
Miga
→ is a sculpture made of paper, saliva, and vegetable glue,
whose base casts a reflection on the ceiling, like a light, a sun, to be invoked when all seems lost—
a luminous star to guide us along the way.
→ is a performance
in which my hand furtively slips a tiny ball between the skin and the shirt of those present at the exhibition, so they can tactically perceive a subtle sense of discomfort—
like when a crumb, while eating, falls on the skin.
Miga is that fragment capable of showing us the way,
a small sign that places a semicolon along the paths of life.
Miga is that spicy pinch that changes the flavor in your mouth and leaves a trace on the palate.
Miga is the pea beneath the mattress, a story left in suspense, a discomfort, a pernicious inconsistency.
Miga is that little ball, that lump, that particle full of saliva you used to toss—or have tossed at you—at the nape of your neck in school.
A game that has renounced innocence.
Miga is, above all, a sting, a feeling of unease, of irritation.
The perception of something about to come, though you don’t know when.
Something that will sweep over you—
and, above all, something you cannot stop.
Miga is the pebble in the shoe.
Miga is a particle between skin and clothing.
It is the interstice, the threshold, the contact between you and the outside world; it is a foreign body brushing against you.
Miga is a presence that becomes essence.
The essence of existence itself.
***
This is the summary of the Shaping the Void project presented by CISMA:
“A multidisciplinary artistic gathering that transforms loss into creation.
We start from books damaged by the DANA storm in l’Horta Sud and donated copies in a deteriorated state, turned into paper pulp to give life to new creations.
A collective process in which contemporary art, architecture, literature, poetry, music, design, illustration, and art criticism converge, weaving a shared narrative about reconstruction and resilience.” by CISMA
