mal de AIRE

Where the earth breathes, the ants heal, and bodies remember

Casa Serra is pleased to present mal de AIRE. Featuring a body of work by R. Serra, shaped by the oral traditions of Tlayacapan, Morelos, and the enduring wisdom of Doña Felipa Hernández Barragán.

Here, clay figures, ants, and ritual characters drawn from the healing practice of mal de AIRE are reimagined not as artifacts of a distant past but as vital presences that pulse, whisper, and intervene within the contemporary moment. The exhibition invites viewers into a space where ancestral knowledge moves through material, gesture, and atmosphere, blurring the thresholds between myth and memory, ritual and everyday life.

In the heart of Mexico, where memory is not written in books but in clay, smoke, and the spoken word, a universe persists in which ancient remedies still converse with the wind. Drawing from this lineage, the exhibition gathers paintings, clay forms, jewellery and curated objects into a sensory journey that translates these traditions into a contemporary visual language that feels both intimate and expansive.

The earth as body / the body as offering

Clay figures such as people resting on woven mats, guardian animals, and birds that whistle the wind are transformed into contemporary sculptures that surface the tenderness of human fragility. Each work becomes a fragment of an interior landscape shaped by pain, hope, and the patient’s passage toward healing. Modelled through ancestral gestures, the clay emerges as a metaphor for a Mexico that heals through domestic intimacy and the murmured words exchanged in patios where life and death sit down to converse.

A tribute to Doña Felipa

More than a historical figure, Doña Felipa is evoked as an archetype, the woman who safeguards knowledge, who speaks with the invisible, and who sustains life through words that become remedies. Her presence guides the project and offers an invitation to reconnect with roots, rituals, and the spiritual intelligence woven into everyday life.

Ants as bearers of secrets

Guided by a phrase inherited from Doña Felipa, the ants feed the señores aires, and there are things only the healer knows, the ants appear as a central symbolic axis throughout the exhibition. They emerge embroidered into textiles, shaped into organic jewellery, traced across canvases, or gathered in installations that evoke caves, roots, and swirling winds. As messengers and mediators, these small shamans remind us that the sacred does not always reveal itself in force. Sometimes its power lies in the quiet persistence of many working together.

A bridge between tradition and the contemporary

Through paintings, sculptures, textiles, and jewellery, mal de AIRE revitalises ritual energy within a contemporary context. The exhibition affirms that tradition is not a fixed object but a living body that continually shifts, reinterprets itself, and finds new pathways of expression. It is contemporary art that acknowledges its lineage and celebrates the resonance of its inheritance.

A contemporary sanctuary

The exhibition space is conceived as an imagined reinterpretation of the sites where healing rituals once took place, a place where earth, smoke, and silence enter into dialogue. Suspended textiles recall the blankets that sheltered the unwell. Shadow plays suggest the invisible drift of the winds. Clay sculptures arranged low to the ground invite viewers to lower their gaze and enter a ritual gesture. Subtle sounds the hush of wind, the steps of ants, the distant call of a bird accompany the experience. Visitors do not simply observe. They enter a territory where healing unfolds as a choreography between the body, the land, and ancient forces.