PALOMA MAYORGA

Manos que trabajan la tierra / Hands that work the earth, 2025

Part of WaterWork 2025.

Exhibition Dates: September 26 & 27

Manos que trabajan la tierra / Hands that work the earth is a stop-motion video artwork that utilizes scanner photography to animate local flora and pays homage to the hands and labor behind Austin’s cultivated and wild landscapes. Gardeners, farmers, landscapers, foragers, botanists, and other healers are often overlooked stewards of the land. They till the soil, plant the seeds, and tend to the plants that allow for local fauna to return and rich ecosystems to thrive. They grow the food that nourishes our bodies and develop a reciprocal relationship with the earth. This video artwork is a visual prayer of gratitude for their labor and love. Utilizing local flora found throughout our parks, natural spaces, and backyard farms during the summer months, this artwork additionally serves as a living archive showcasing Austin’s unique biodiversity within the urban landscape.

A collaboration between Design Austin and The Trail Conservancy, WaterWork is a unique, immersive art experience that celebrates the dynamic relationship between Austin’s urban landscape and its cherished natural environment. This two-night event transforms the iconic façade of Austin’s historic Seaholm Intake Facility into a vibrant canvas of art, light, and motion for 15 talented local artists.

WaterWork is free and open to the public, viewable from various vantage points along the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail, such as Auditorium Shores and the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge. A limited number of tickets are available to watch the show from aboard our boat cruise.

Details and tickets can be found here.

Location: Seaholm Intake Facility on Lady Bird Lake, Austin, Texas

For this project, I collected specimens from Republic Square in Downtown Austin. For nearly four years, my friend Vi Freeman has been the primary gardener at Republic Square. She’s part of the landscape design team responsible for the restoration of the park and had many stories to share with me when she gave me a tour earlier this summer. She told me a little about how she got started with this project, lessons learned specific to each season, and the solitary bees that inhabit her custom-made bug motels. Vi explained how much observation, experimentation, and physical and emotional labor goes into growing a garden.

You can listen to our full conversation as we walked through Republic Square below: