Lucía Egaña Rojas and Ju Salgueiro, 2020

To examine entanglements between violence, extractivism, gender, sexuality, and coloniality, «Piedras Preciosas (Precious Stones)» presents minerals as symbols of resistance rather than objects of commodification. Drawing from queer theorist Jack Halberstam’s assertion that “the stone butch has the dubious distinction of being, perhaps, the only sexual identity defined almost entirely by the practices it does not engage in,” «Piedras Preciosas» unsettles Western frameworks that reduce subjects to extractable resources.

Colonial practices of extraction include severing minerals from their natural and relational contexts to transform them into commodities fueling capitalist accumulation. «Piedras Preciosas» insists on a re-enchantment of the material world, resisting the capitalist and colonial violence that fractures identities and ecologies alike. By invoking stones as both archive and presence, the work gestures toward a different future—one that displaces the hegemonic order and reproduction of gender, capitalism, and coloniality.

—Text by Georgie Sánchez as included in the 2025 exhibition, ‘ficciones patógenas‘

«Piedras preciosas» was Acquisited by Leslie Lohman Museum.