With her I would fly and my favorite place was right by her side, full of music and stardust to be shared.

A part of me left those stairs to flow with the salty tears that fall into the ocean, while the other continued to climb - ascending - the stairs to get a better view. Although the trip is understood as an end, it is not one-way: I entered the ocean, but I can also see and contemplate much better. Journey's End is also a beginning.

In a time of complete disconnection with my mind and body, I began, almost by accident, to practice aerial dance, I never imagined that in this place I would see so closely how my body had fallen prey to my fears and my demons, and that was how every day I held on tighter and rose away from them, almost as if by hanging upside down, they were going to fall one by one, and they did.

Lit deep in moon glow,

a portal to be present

- surrounded in delightful petrichor bliss

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An invitation to clarity, 

a tasting of the sweetest songs. 

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Since childhood, I have been fascinated by how beautiful the wear of time can be on architecture, turning the irregular and colorful facades of Mexico into authentic fantasy worlds full of pipes and broken surfaces. They made me think I was exploring an abandoned factory and that each alleyway was a passage to a new world. There is great beauty in rediscovering forgotten places.

From time to time, my brain meat and even my soul hang by a thread, thin and waxed when I wake up with shrunken nerves lynched by a handful of ghosts made of dense black smoke that descend until they settle on my raw soul, my fragile soul, my human soul that does not intend anything other than to rest; and this smoke invades with a screeching sound that only my heart hears, and from time to time laughs making this dense and dark smoke a pretext to continue and in the worst of cases to try to wake up.

Sansevieria rooftop, has several of these plants, and many stories to tell. For more than 20 years we have been able to enjoy and wash our clothes in this beautiful space, in addition to being able to see “los Dinamos”, bathe the dogs, camp, get drunk, rock in a makeshift hammock and eat roasted vegetables.

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It is a place where those Christmas lights that are now trendy in restaurants and terraces would be perfect. Where we could intervene the water tank and where perhaps the clotheslines could be removed. Where the washing machine room can be better fitted and a study to draw can be put into place. But that makes it almost perfect. 

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It has been a place that has saved us during the quarantine, where we prepare “micheladas” with sweet sesame, where I am tempted to grab the lemons from the neighbor's tree; where at night, when we are in our rooms ready to sleep, we have heard noises and we always assume it is "the cat"; where whenever we are talking, at least one red-headed bird arrives; And where every time we go up, “Chucho” thinks we are going to have a barbecue and he gets excited because he knows that my mother will give him some of her food.

Whenever we eat there, we want to be together, but “Huesos”, for some reason, always wants to be downstairs...

My creepiest nightmares have taken place here. It is a live and boiling darkness, a malevolent entity, a tear in reality. Since then, I have encountered it a dozen times, corrupting some of my dearest places. It is always different, but I always know it is the black church. 

My Broken Place are actually moments that mark me and reset my life. Be it the way I feel, or literally events that make my situation change. But what always makes me feel better (even if I am O.K.), is having moments with the people I love, that's why here I represent some of those little moments where I fully enjoyed and lived the happiness of being able to share the same space and time. 

I never imagined the space a life could occupy, or that freedom was hidden between old walls and gnawed wood. 

I’m not a professional illustrator… i doodle for fun and that’s it, I’m one of those who enjoy the process more than the outcome. 

Having spent half of my life in a now increasingly clear evil regime, P.R. China, I certainly have my gripes, things that I can’t change about it and about myself.

I’ve done works that are more metaphorical, but this isn’t one of them, it almost feels as if they don’t deserve to be depicted in any sophisticated artistry, so here you have it, take nothing more than its face value: a narcissist pig riding on a headless cockroach marching onto the world, it’s messy, it’s unrefined, it’s annoying to watch, just like it’s subject. 

After hours, some left to go home, while the night owls got ready to party among the visible foulness of the naked city. And in that moment, when the city slept, the only ones who listened to our laughter and secrets where the roaches.

There is something that many of us know but is difficult for us to see and understand: it is not the beginning, but the end. It is difficult for us to accept that everything ends —or we realize it too late—. Gold is not at the end of the road; the road is made of gold.

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My broken places are all those experiences that I did not relish. I lived in eternal nostalgia, longing to return to them because I was too busy with what had happened and what could happen, seldom with what was happening.

From birth to death, we will be full of contrasts: beauty-chaos. And it's O.K. Everything ends, and it will last until this chaotic hourglass we call life is emptied. 

I belong to that place where I have returned every time I have wanted to leave. 

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Beneath the mask what she found she was magical.

We live in a glorious, but simultaneously awful world. Every day, everyone is under stress, but the ability to be happy and to see beauty keeps them sane.

Everyone understands this phrase in their own way, and it will be true. The meaning of this artwork is in everybody’s thoughts.

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Art: @fros_one

Photo: @guywhithacamera

Assistant: @_thepaskiller

Photography Mexico, CDMX, San Cosme - 2003.

How to describe a place in memory? The answer would be very difficult, I think it is like describing a dream or something that has been forgotten.

One of the many places that I documented in my youth, where the only thing that mattered to me was spending time on a skateboard, which gave me hope and emotions, getting to know places and people, and now there are only forgotten memories in some boxes of photographic rolls and some other lost videotape.

Injured ankles and some broken bones.

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Library / disc jockey / commerce / meeting room / treasure box

I am broken. I create. By any means necessary, take me to the broken place. It is here where I find my true self. The freedom from perfection and absolution. Little pieces of my soul scattered and found. Then fused, blended, joined, and bonded from their original context to create new meaning through evolution. I find myself here on the precipice of my emotions clinging to reality with the need to escape.  

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A room is that safe place where you are, others where you find yourself, many times where you hide from those situations, people or experiences that you want to forget for a moment. If life has its way, it is where you say goodbye to a family member or welcome another new being, it is a magical and little valued, private space; sometimes cold, sometimes warm, its atmosphere is constantly changing depending on the person or the moment.

As a child my friends said that I lived in a dollhouse. My father's death took much away, and the last thing was this house. My heart remembers many things that defined my psyche and repeatedly takes me there. My dad planned the house’s architecture, thinking about his family. I enjoyed going out my bedroom window and sitting on the kitchen ceiling, enjoying the mornings. In that space my imagination had no limits. From time to time my dreams transport me to that time, to that house, to those feelings.

Broken ties, painful memories, deep denials, outrage and hatred, empty bottles, malice towards life, hypocrisy around the corner, repudiate humanity, silent nights, dehydration from crying so much, memory loss, cancelling feelings, fake smiles, lacerating caresses, hurting words, wishing to be stardust, verbalize what happened, constant confrontations, war cries, acceptance and forgiveness, more crying and despair, analysis of yesterday, identification of being, smile from the heart, wanting to be happy, self-healing, trust again, speak from love, thank daily, focus on today, keep going, love deeply, and live.

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Note: The original text is structured as a poem. Each thought is expressed as a separate sentence. 

Sometimes we try to protect ourselves, we try to hide what hurts us, but when we show that little or a large part of our darkness, we push away and harm those we love the most.

We watch from a corner feeling like a small worm hidden on that flower that reminds us of pain; we observe how the light of the thoughts that surround us dance in our mind to the rhythm of the jellyfish swim.

"Desert" is a term that generally refers to the absence of life or the possibility of life itself. At some point in my adolescence, I thought the same of Chihuahua when carrying my backpack of several kilos in a summer of 45º and winters below 0.

When I went to study in Veracruz I was overwhelmed by the amount of water and for the first time I felt that I needed to recover under the sun or snow, among the dunes, cacti, the sound of an invisible rattlesnake, bison, caves, canyons and an immense sky that suddenly fills you with life.

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After a long week or a long month there was always a day when I could go to this place, which makes me connect with myself and allows me to forget everything around me.

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I have felt broken, I try to put my pieces together.

Maybe in some way we are all broken, we are looking for something to build with our remains, maybe something new, maybe something better.

A new us emerges from the rubble. Colors surge from between the cracks and a new heart appears. Renewed, I make my broken places a delicious place to live.

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* This piece arose from my experimentations and failures when casting with resin. A replica of my doll went wrong, I decided to keep it without knowing that months later I would receive an invitation that would give life to said plastic remains.

Anger takes you to a place where you don't want to be. However, it is a place of learning that will teach you not to fall back into it.

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This piece represents a character that I developed called Mr. Fox, which represents all the street art that I have done for 16 years.

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My favorite place is the street of any city in the world, and I like to leave in them a bit of my art.

We tend to look for the best places in the world, or outside of it, the same thing happens with dark, murky, and unreal places. But what if you look at yourself? Come close, closer, go to that corner of you that you have never dared to look at.

It may be true that you never finish knowing someone, but what about you when you start to know yourself?

There’s nothing perfect about a memory.

Only scattered fragments of mental images that we deliberately choose as reality.
 

They grow inside us, rooting deeper each time, as if their only wish was to dissolve what’s left of the actual moment driving it close to oblivion.

Once broken my soul begins to heal…

Years ago, I moved into an old house in the woods. A house with huge, forgotten and wild gardens, that invited me to accompany her in her lonely decadence.

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There, at the bottom of one of those gardens I found "The source".

I think that, without knowing it, we all look for it at some point in our lives. That strange feeling of having found our place in the world. That place we return to, when everything is overwhelming outside, or when we think we can't take it anymore.

And we can.

That is "The Source".

Finding it is the beginning of the road, we have to get to its origin.

The first five months of 2021 have brought into my life a place that I did not expect, my broken body. On January 13, I test positive for SARS-CoV. Recovered, I move to be close to mine, my family. And then the unforeseen, the aftermath. Post-Covid Neurological Syndrome.

This visual piece is an account of my medical experiences in Mexico City. Connections, times, places, medicines, medical tests, costs. The omission of explanatory texts or labels leads the viewer to look for the narrative within the data as a researcher or a mere diviner.

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It was the last flight of the first day of a life different from the one he had known. “El Ojo de Caín” was the home and the platform that gave me so much and that was breaking apart little by little. In the end there was nothing to do but take what was left and build a vehicle that would take me to the next day, the next week, the next month... in short, to the until now endless uncertainty of tomorrow.

Farewell Marlla.

Four or five years ago I made a comic called Oblivion, which is the story of a Rabbit named Major Tom (yes, like Sheiling and Bowie) who has an accident in space and gets lost in another dimension and his greatest fear. is that he cannot return to his reality. The comic was about facing fear and right now with The Broken Places I reinterpreted the concept in one piece.

A great fear is being in the Oblivion. We can take the metaphor anywhere: to irrelevance, rejection or where we do not want to go and may have to face it.

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In the end I realized that that place, for me, are moments in which you have to make a decision for a situation in which you put yourself (because it was your dream, your fear or your desire that little by little took you there) to that point where the only decision is to step forward or go back, knowing that either one of them is going to change you, knowing that there are no guarantees that neither of them is "the best", "will make you happy" or "take away your fear. "

Those moments when after asking yourself a thousand times "what are you going to do?" You just close your eyes, spread your arms, and breathe one more time.

In December 2013 after dragging a strong creative block for years, I decided to teach myself how to draw in my free time. At the end of my workday, every night and seven days a week from 9 to 11 p.m. I went out to draw people on the Mexico City subway and buses.

During the next six years this space became essential in my personal and professional life; Not only because it gave me a creative refresh but because it helped me transform the discipline of drawing from a routine to a habit and later something essential in my life. Today I cannot visualize my life without a notebook and without being able to draw.

My piece for The Broken Places is a selection of drawings made between 2019 and early 2020, shortly before the CoVID-19 pandemic began. Unfortunately, and for obvious reasons I have stopped doing this drawing exercise, but I hope to be able to resume it soon once we return to relative normality.

Universal Symbiosis

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they emerged in waves

burrowing deeper into your refuge

creating. destroying. changing.

they live inside the walls you will never tear down

By having a complicated beginning, constantly changing places, from move to move and seeing how places closed; these uncontrollable changes and endings create an existential void. My attachment to places is minimal, I tend to cling to small memories that I idealize in my memory.

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That fight with your partner over the color to be used in the kitchen. The broken beers at the party with your friends. The liters of coffee we drank. That series or movie that you recommended, and I didn't watch. The concerts shared, sometimes with strangers. All the songs that we gave each other. And even races we lost.

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I can't explain everything, my head sometimes (many, really many) is somewhere else. Thinking about the next moment or seeing that the one I'm living through will end soon. We are just multiple possibilities in a direct line to chaos, and so, in a world of variables I am always grateful for the constants.

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“La Cañita” is a seafood restaurant located in the center of the city, in the Doctores neighborhood. “La Cañita” is the space where I can be myself, where I can share laughter and talk with people I love, with people who have left and people who remain.

A place with a unique magic and vibe that I have not found elsewhere.

Everything is dark, the damp walls of the cavern sparkle with the light of your torch. You turn around and see your companions, weapons in hand and spells prepared.

In the background you perceive the reflection of 10 small eyes approaching.

A table that does not exist, stories that never happened with characters that never were,

memories of imaginary places, in front of the screen light.

At the center of the creature a massive eleventh eye blinks and stares at you. It's Friday, 10 p.m. You have 4 beers in the fridge and your friends are waiting for you.

Roll for initiative.

The moment and my broken place happen at home when mom decided to leave never to return. I have not been able to tell you that you not only left a house but also a broken heart that has never been very well, but with you by my side I knew it would be calm.

Since I was little, the same thoughts and fears accompany me, one of them is being alone but I have been able to turn them around.

The nights when they come to me, I squeeze my eyes tight until I forget them momentarily, not knowing anything about you tormented me for a long time and I did not know how to deal with it. I was left without the strength to move on, I stopped doing what I love the most and it has taken me time to get back to doing it, but I am.

Weighing heavy on her heart she took a deep breath “Te veo pronto…” I wish I had said more. I take it for granted my breath. Mami, just breath. I’d give my last breath if it meant she’d be here. In your last breath you asked for forgiveness. No mami, forgive me. I’m not O.K. 

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Like the freefall of a young bird who has yet learned to fly. Can I make it without her? Broken breath. I would call, she’d be there. But no more. Just breath. I miss you. Mami. My life will never be the same… that place, that moment – Broke me. Breathe. I love you. Please breathe. Then emptiness. Lost in the dark, trying to find the pieces.

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Breathe. I am broken. 

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But now mami, now you can breathe. 

When everything hurt, everything crumbled and reconstructed daily.

Where there was once uncertainty and pain, now an internal revolution expanded to create a real form of love, you, my Maria Sandino.

I inevitably return to the crimson interstice between the person I was, and the person I came to be. 

One of my most important [Broken Places] is illustration. From a very young age I have liked to draw but I never liked it or did not dare to show what I did and this represents many important things for me, to begin with, this style of vector illustration I call [Hard line] is the one I enjoy doing the most, so it becomes a temporary escape from my stress, from my usual work and the worries that arise from the current world that surrounds us.

The meaningful concept of this illustration revolves around 2 important axes for me, one is that the illustration is based on the identity that I generated as an artist (the hooded man with the skull face = reaper) since with the isolation I dared to take my Instagram profile and start sharing my illustration work and toys with the world. The second axis is that precisely around this time a year ago was when I began this path of sharing my work and having the fortune of starting to meet people from this community of toy and illustration artists.

I was at HOME in Oaxaca, and I looked out by the border, and I could only see the green, the sky and the clouds, it was beautiful, peaceful and quiet. I felt peace, I felt that everything was possible and strong.

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Inspired on important moments that have made me change or modify my way of thinking.

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My favorite place is one and all at the same time, in this space I can see, feel, enjoy and even suffer over and over again all those places and moments charged with some feeling that make them so special.

In this same space I bring everything and everyone who has made those places become unique moments which have helped me to be me.

Despite the days that all of us have gone through, one of the Broken places where I always take refuge is my mind, it is where I can arrive, create, destroy, be who I really am; it is like arriving in your room and walk around in boxers.

Our mind is the place where we can be whoever we want without being judged by anyone, it is playing at being gods.

After three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead

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A horse with no name by America