During a three-month residency in Mexico, Marta Fernández Calvo and Ruta del Castor developed a public art project around food as a form of protection. The project unfolded through encounters with women from rural communities in Guerrero and Oaxaca; young women living under protective care after experiences of violence and abuse; the religious sisters and caregivers of Casa Cuna La Paz, who accompany children in vulnerable circumstances; and members of Ruta del Castor’s extended community of collaborators.

The stories gathered throughout the process were later shared with artisans from different regions of Mexico, who were invited to listen to them and translate them into material forms. The resulting installation took shape as an altar of amulets: a collective structure where foods, voices, craft, and memory converged as gestures of care and resistance.

The work was presented at Proyecto Público PRIM in Mexico City, where it was activated through a performance with singers who sought to make the foods reverberate through the bodies of participants and audience members. Through voice, song, and presence, the action became a way of invoking what nourishes, accompanies, and protects us.

A second public outcome of the project emerged through a collaboration between Ruta del Castor and ZⓈONAMACO Patio. Fragments from the amulet stories were placed in bus shelters across Mexico City, occupying structures usually reserved for advertising. In this shift from intimate testimony to urban circulation, the project brought personal and collective narratives into the public sphere, making visible forms of knowledge and care that often remain outside dominant spaces of representation.

“Yo echo para atrás las cosas malas” celebrates oral tradition as a living technology of protection, transmission, and communal knowledge. By bringing together food, storytelling, craft, song, and public space, the project understands art as a way of amplifying lived memory and transforming everyday gestures into shared forms of resistance, joy, and care.

“For me, the kitchen is a space of resistance where recipes become musical pieces, alter egos, performances, and fictional exercises through which to cross borders and summon joy, love, and grief.”

— Marta Fernández Calvo

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Ruta del Castor extends special thanks to Acción Cultural Española, SOMA, and Proyecto Público PRIM for their support and collaboration in the development of this project.