Hacer brotar / To sprout
San Francisco, USA. May 2025

Text by Mackenzie Stevens

Hacer brotar / To sprout is Celeste’s first solo exhibition on the west coast and
their debut exhibition with Rebecca Camacho Presents.

Celeste is an artist duo based in Mexico City, formed by María Fernanda
Camarena (b. Guadalajara, 1988) and Gabriel Rosas Alemán (b. Mexico City,
1983). The artists’ collaborative practice incorporates archetypal images –
hands, vessels, spirals, amongst others – that are woven into or painted on
large-scale dyed cotton textiles. Their practice comprises discrete sculptural
objects as well as multi-part immersive installations.

Celeste frequently works in a site-responsive way, responding to the
particularities of a site or location, and their presentation at Rebecca Camacho
Presents incorporates objects conceived of in relation to the architectural
features of the gallery. The works on view in Hacer brotar / To sprout
developed from Celeste’s ongoing research on public art, public spaces, and
communities – both contemporary and historical – within Mexico City. Diego
Rivera’s El Agua, Origen de la Vida (Water, the Origin of Life) painted in
1951 served as a particularly rich touchstone for the artists. Located in the
Chapultepec Forest in the Cárcamo de Dolores, El Agua Origen de la Vida
intertwines water with the histories of Mexico, visualizing the ways in which
water is connected to all – biologically, culturally, spiritually.

Celeste’s installation at Rebecca Camacho Presents draws upon the ideas
visualized in Rivera’s mural. Consisting of three separate sections weaving
through the gallery’s interior, the arches in Caminos para el agua I, II, and III
are based on the form of an aqueduct, an architectural innovation designed to
channel water for drinking and irrigation, allowing communities around the
world to flourish. Spirals with long linear extensions represent the movement
of water, to the life it offers, and bulbous forms suggest the bounty of water that
flows along aqueducts and underground within the aquifers below Mexico City.

¡Qué llueva, qué llueva! (Let it rain, Let it rain) is a triptych featuring
imagery that resembles cisterns and aqueducts, tools that collect
and channel water. The title, “let it rain,” is a direct reference to the
environmental changes challenging our relationship to water as well
as the aquifers below Mexico City that are in jeopardy because of over
extraction and reduced rainfall. These aquifers flow freely without
boundaries or borders between Mexico and the United States.

Three copper hand-painted vessels titled Anáhuac (surrounded by water),
Ollin (movement), Xictli (navel) refer to the inherent traits of water –
movement, motion, centrality – in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua
people who have lived in what is now known as Mexico and throughout
Central America for thousands of years. Anáhuac is the original Nahua
name for Mexico and translates to “land surrounded by water.”

Together, the artworks in Hacer brotar / To sprout remind us of the
intrinsic and fundamental qualities of water – a vital form of nourishment
upon which all life on Earth hinges.

Anáhuac (surrounded by water), 2025
Oil on hand hammered copper

Ollin (movement), 2025
Oil on hand hammered copper

Xictli (navel), 2025
Oil on hand hammered copper