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(UN)POWER

Those who have the means to extract from the Earth hold not only the power to dominate the so-called nature but also to exert control over invisibilized bodies and silenced histories—a dire truth that reveals the hierarchies of domination underpinning a world order shaped by the logic of industrial capitalism.

At the intersection of geology, gender, and extractivism, González Barragán presents a body of work that reclaims the discarded remnants of mining ambitions—projects that have played a central role in shaping national identities in both Mexico and the United States. In her sculptures, core drill bits, stone fragments, and mineral waste become agents of resistance and reimagination, engaging in dialogue with marble, obsidian, and materials recovered from mines. Through evocative assemblages, these elements reflect on the intertwined legacies of extractive industries that impact both territories and bodies through practices of slow violence.

Through a research-based practice grounded in relational methodologies, González Barragán has, for over a decade, collaborated with the obsidian mining community in central Mexico—a mineral deeply embedded in cultural and historical legacies. After relocating to the U.S., she began working with the community of Marble, Colorado—a site with its own nationalist symbolism, given that the exceptional quality and luster of its marble have made it the material of choice for national monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

These installations resist containment—they loop, drip, and scar—proposing new systems of flow, intimacy, and care. As such, they become both critique and proposal; they embody both solidity and fluidity. Their dual nature enables alternative avenues of reflection—ways to navigate the fractured terrains of extractive capitalism and the fragmented identities shaped by coloniality, ultimately arriving at other ways of coming to know.

In these spaces, vulnerability is not the opposite of strength, and power is no longer static; it is contested, redistributed, and ultimately redefined: it is unpowered.

Flow, 2025

White Yule marble, diamond wire, chain, hoist, hose, water pump, marble water, bucket, Longwall machine drill bit, replicas in bronze

Carved from discarded Yule marble sourced from Colorado’s quarries, Flow stages a delicate tension between gravitational force and vulnerability. Suspended from a chain hoist, the marble block bears traces of its industrial origins -- diamond chainsaw marks scar its surface as remnants of a violent past. Twined with a used cutting wire and a hose that channels marble-laced water into a plastic bucket, the installation becomes both vessel and system: a conduit for memories of transformation that circulate within. The slow drip of slurry evokes both bodily fluids and extractive systems, pointing to an intimate geology, where the passage of matter generates friction that shapes form over time.

Ana González Barragán

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Ana
González
Barragán