Ropa sucia (The Wash) is a limited edition artist book by Ana María Caballero.
Each version of Ropa sucia contains a unique set of twelve poems and materials with which to hang them. Collectors may arrange the poems as they wish, representing analog generativity: Caballero’s idea that every reading is its own universe. In assembling the book’s pages, collectors become co-creators.
The paper on which the poems are printed was handmade from the artist’s bed linens – the result of a close collaboration with ARRATOS, an artisanal paper-making studio in Madrid.
Written in the artist’s signature, straightforward style, these poems give voice to what’s left unsaid in the all-important space of home, hanging dirty laundry—literally—out to dry.
Each artist book includes a digital file that presents a singular “reading” of its texts, as conveyed by a tailor-made algorithm, combining analog and machine-driven generativity.
Caballero worked with coder Cameron Nelson on this algorithm. Nelson used the artist’s previous performative interventions as source material, where poetry was transformed through interpretive dance, chalk, and acrylic into a series of handmade marks.
The digital file conveys an unbound book and incorporates stills from a choreographic performance by Caballero, in which the artist expresses one of Ropa sucia’s poems via movement, probing the connection between embodied experience and the language that attempts to record it.
The composition relies on an array of digital drawing tools including Python, shader code, HTML, and Javascript via the p5.js framework, and draws on a visual language developed in Caballero’s prior choreographic works.
Scattered stamps of the poet’s body in motion – still frames from the recorded choreography, extracted with AI – contextualize the generative mark-making as they dance between the words on the page.
The resulting linear etchings speak a guttural language that transmits the immediacy and urgency of performance.
The minted files have high-resolution twins that may be printed by the collector at up to 130cm x 90cm.
Released in partnership with S/W Ediciones.
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