Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds moves between Lake Michigan and the volcanic terrain surrounding Popocatépetl and Paso de Cortés, tracing relationships between body and weather, breath and ash, erosion and maintenance, memory and place. Born in Mexico City and based in Chicago, Susy Bielak brings into dialogue two landscapes that have shaped her own life, the volcanic terrain surrounding Mexico City, where much of her family remains, and the shoreline of Lake Michigan, which has been her daily horizon for the past thirteen years. The work explores inner and outer weather, visualizing the interwoven strata of bodily, environmental, social, and political life.

Drawing from scientific image systems such as geological diagrams, bathymetric maps, hazard maps, and retinal scans, the work considers accumulation, instability, and the material traces left by environmental, political, and personal forces.

Over more than two years, a series of visits, conversations, shared excursions, and exchanges between Chicago-based artist Susy Bielak and Mexico City–based artist Nuria Montiel shaped the development of the project. Later conversations and fieldwork at Paso de Cortés brought Bielak’s longtime collaborator Fred Schmalz into the dialogue. References and observations spanning from the monitoring of Lake Michigan to records of Popocatépetl’s exhalations circulated among the artists, creating unexpected correspondences between distant geographies and lived experiences. Passing between them like clouds, wind currents, and dispersed ash, these exchanges became a way of thinking across distance, geography, and lived experience.

Through a site-responsive installation including paintings on amate paper, visual poems, suspended broom forms, volcanic ash, window drawings, needlefelt works, and photographs documenting temporary actions, Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds considers how we navigate uncertainty and create moments of care, protection, and temporary order within shifting conditions.

Ash Beds moves between Lake Michigan and the volcanic terrain surrounding Popocatépetl and the Paso de Cortés, tracing the relationships between body and climate, breath and ash, wear and tear, memory and place. Susy Bielak, born in Mexico City and based in Chicago, engages in a dialogue between two landscapes that have shaped her life: the volcanic terrain surrounding Mexico City, where much of her family still lives, and the shores of Lake Michigan, which have been her horizon for the past thirteen years. The work explores internal and external climate, visualizing the interwoven layers of bodily, environmental, social, and political life.

Drawing on scientific imaging systems such as geological diagrams, bathymetric maps, hazard maps, and retinal scans, the work addresses the accumulation, instability, and material traces left by environmental, political, and personal forces.
For more than two years, a series of visits, conversations, shared excursions, and exchanges between Chicago-based artist Susy Bielak and Mexico City-based artist Nuria Montiel shaped the project’s development. Subsequent conversations and fieldwork brought Fred Schmalz, a longtime collaborator of Bielak’s, into the dialogue. References and observations, ranging from monitoring Lake Michigan to documenting Popocatépetl eruptions, circulated between the artists, creating unexpected correspondences between distant geographies and lived experiences. Passing between them like clouds, air currents, and dispersed ash, these exchanges became a way of thinking that transcends distance, geography, and lived experiences.
Through an installation adapted to the space that includes paintings on amate paper, visual poems, suspended broom shapes, volcanic ash, drawings on windows, needle felt works and photographs that document ephemeral actions, Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds reflects on how we face uncertainty and create moments of care, protection and temporary order amidst changing circumstances.

Susy Bielak is an artist and writer whose work explores migration, displacement, memory, and place. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, text, and video, she reimagines the social and political structures written into our environments.

Informed by her own diasporic experience, Bielak’s work traces relationships between interior and exterior landscapes, connecting intimate experiences to larger environmental, political, and historical forces.

Her projects range in form, spanning from drawings made with her breath to videos staged in sites of scientific testing. Her collaborators have included writers in exile, bus drivers, social workers, choreographers, engineers, musicians, and scientists.
Bielak’s work has been exhibited, collected, and published widely, including by the Museo Tamayo, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, New American Paintings, and Poetry Magazine. She received her MFA from the University of California San Diego and is Assistant Professor of Art at Lake Forest College, where she is currently a Mellon Fellow. She lives and works in Chicago.

Nuria Montiel (b. 1982, Mexico City) explores art as a social and aesthetic process capable of generating collective forms of knowledge, expanding sensitivity, and fostering awareness. Working across drawing, textiles, printmaking, and site-specific, community-based projects, she develops collaborative frameworks that bring together local histories, material traditions, and shared experience.

Her recent work has focused on textile practices developed in dialogue with Indigenous knowledge and contemporary artistic inquiry. Montiel’s work has been exhibited at Museo Amparo, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Kurimanzutto, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, and the Hyde Park Art Center, among other venues. She is a member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (SNCA), holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and lives and works in Mexico City.

Nuria Montiel (b. 1982, Mexico City) explores art as a social and aesthetic process capable of generating collective forms of knowledge, expanding sensitivity, and fostering awareness. Through drawing, textiles, printmaking, and site-specific community projects, she develops collaborative frameworks that bring together local histories, material traditions, and shared experiences.

Her recent work has focused on textile practices developed in dialogue with Indigenous knowledge and contemporary artistic research. Montiel’s work has been exhibited at the Museo Amparo, the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Kurimanzutto, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, and the Hyde Park Art Center, among other venues. She is a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators (SNCA), holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and lives and works in Mexico City.

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Tags: Camas de Ceniza / Ash Beds, Chicago, Nuria Montiel, Pueblo Unido Gallery, Susy Bielak