Intimacy with a (non) site
For BMoCA’s Inside/Out commission, González Barragán created a site-specific installation using cast-off gray Yule marble from the Yule Marble Quarry (Marble, Colorado). Positioned as a metaphor for the act of extraction, Intimacy with a (non) site references female anatomy by evocatively threading a steel pipe through drilled holes, led by a phallic-shaped drill bit used in industrial coal mining. The artist’s intimate manipulation of the materials using hand tools further expresses commentary on the often violent and exploitative industrial methods, commodification, and transnational circulation of natural resources. She positions the inherent qualities of marble’s vein-like lines and raw edges in conversation with spray paint and chainsaw marks—residual evidence of mine activity.
Ana González Barragán is an artist and researcher who uses the extraction of stones and minerals as a lens to examine how capitalism and patriarchy shape dominant narratives surrounding the commodification of the body and natural resources. González Barragán’s practice centers around research, documentation, and socio-political commentary of the mining industry, most often translated into sculptural objects made from mine-recovered materials. She works extensively on-site in Sierra de las Navajas, Mexico, and Marble, Colorado, where she has built relationships with impacted local communities. In doing so, she has been able to create field reports that straddle the tension between our human fascination with the finite, natural beauty of ancient, geological materials and the man-made, macro-industrial methodologies created to blindly consume them.
Discovered in the 1870s, the Yule Marble Quarry is one of the largest and most prominent underground marble quarries in the world. It is located 9,500 ft above sea level, in a site that formed over millions of years, from the accretion of calcite from layers of marine shells that transformed dense black limestone into gleaming white marble. The exceptional quality and luster of Yule marble have made it a preferred choice for several national landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial (1914–22) and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (1931). González Barragán’s focus on disregarded stones and antiquated machinery serves as a parallel time capsule documenting another, softer side of human intervention.