Snake Chamber is a photo and sound installation derived from the performance of the same name, presented at the Musée Paul Valéry in Sète.

The work unfolds around a text addressed to the artist’s assassinated father, interpreted in voice-over by Ixaya. The narrative moves through vernacular photographs, dreams, family archives, state violence, forced displacement and exile. The performance brings together the artist’s mother, collaborators and a gathered public. It operates as a collective ritual where bodies move among maize, flowers, bones and ruins.

Several photographs emerging from the performance employ multiple exposure. Bodies appear superimposed onto landscapes, ruins and fields of corn, as if linear time refuses stability. The image becomes a surface of temporal contamination. Snake Chamber assumes a re-performative dimension that moves between ritual tradition and contemporary popular culture. Latinx pop culture operates as an affective archive.

The performance resonates with the idea of dreaming as a method of knowledge. Listening to images becomes a political practice. The possibility of reconstituting the fragmented body becomes a gesture against colonial archival systems that classify and legitimize violence. Snake Chamber works within incompletion and treats pathos as material. The voice speaks alongside images, in proximity. A segmented memory. Exposed nerves in transformation. A chamber entered in order to share ghosts.