530 is part of the ongoing research project Starches of Abya Yala. It is a participatory installation re-thinking the ideas around monuments for the XXI century.

It is comprised of 530 bricks made from corn, cassava, and potato starch. Some of the bricks are “pure”, while others are “mixed”, echoing the fact that while in some of the regions of the Americas one of these plants reigned supreme, in others they shared protagonism.

Each brick in this piece represents a year since 1492, when Christopher Columbus first arrived in Abya Yala, and until 2022, today. Representing years of history through bricks, with the intention to illustrate the infinite possibilities to re-organize and re-understand it. Visitors are invited to use these bricks to create their own structures, as a metaphor for the need to explore alternative readings around this date beyond hegemonic narratives. These bricks are meant to be recontextualized in each environment in which they exist, just as history is always recontextualized depending on the time and space from which it is evaluated.