Public Program
- Sunday, May 16, 2027, 1pm
- Free with museum admission
- B4.2
In The Gardener of Memory, Ernesto Pujol steps away from the archive and into the soil. He does not preserve memory; he keeps vigil with it. Across seven performances, he writes “seed memories” (or core memories) on a blackboard in English and Spanish, languages shaped by Puerto Rico’s histories of migration and dispersal. Childhood gardens, monastic cloisters, hurricanes, suburban yards, urban weeds: each memory is rooted in lived encounters.
The performance wall becomes a living palimpsest, accumulating and releasing memories through recurring acts of inscription, drawing, and erasure. Remembrance here is not accumulation but cultivation: writing becomes planting, erasing becomes pruning, and the blackboard, once a site of instruction, turns into fertile ground. What disappears is not lost; it nourishes what follows.
Part of Until we get to the core, The Gardener of Memory proposes another tempo in a world accelerated by extraction and erasure. Through scheduled returns, Pujol reactivates the exhibition’s spirit with repeated acts of presence and care. Visitors are invited to dwell, witness, rest, and perhaps begin tending their own landscapes of remembrance.
About the Facilitator:
Ernesto Pujol is a site-specific performance artist and social choreographer whose durational works are structured through walking, silence, and attentive presence. He founded The Listening School in 2015 and The Savage Gardener Project in 2020, and is the author of Sited Body, Public Visions and Walking Art Practice.
Until we get to the core/Hasta llegar al meollo is curated by Michy Marxuach, Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow, MASS MoCA.
Until we get to the core/Hasta llegar al meollo is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI) which is generously supported through leadership gifts from Sarah Arison and the Arison Arts Foundation, Michi Jigarjian, Denise Sobel, the Teiger Foundation, and Yukiko and Anders Schroeder. Additional support is provided by the Director’s Catalyst Fund, with generous contributions from Greg and Anne Avis, Kelly and Bill Kaiser, Steve and Lisa Jenks, Bob Gold, and an anonymous donor.