La Compostura/the healing of the earth: A VR Installation Inspired by a Lenca Ritual
481 9th St, Oakland
June 13-22, 2025
Step into a world entirely anew, in every which way save physical location. Tough to fathom, no? Well, multimedia installation artist Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez managed to make that improbability a reality, if only for one viewer at a time for a few brief minutes.
Staged over two weekends in Old Oakland’s Seven Mirrors, a bright storefront space curated and run by artist Stacey Goodman dedicated to “somatic movement, social art, mystery, magic, and community engagement”, Márquez’s VR experience La Compostura offered guests a moment suspended in a most beautiful time and space, “new ways of seeing…the possibility to articulate new landscapes.”
The set up is simple: an altar of flowers, dried corn, beans, gourds, yams, and candles (real and unlit, false and glowing), centered around a stool. A VR headset, a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
The effect, however, is otherworldly. I’d heard involuntary exclamations of awe from the prior experiencer as I (tried to) watch an accompanying video playing on loop in the corner, but remained mildly skeptical, unsure what could have elicited such uninhibited reactions. But then, despite a poor fit for my small noggin (I held the set in place throughout) and lessened visual impact due to my impairment (removal of glasses was encouraged, so my tracking abilities and detection of fine details were greatly diminished), I was transported. By the end, I’d watched my way through a wormhole, and exited the experience and the space head buzzing but deeply calmed.
With a virtual altar grounding (or vehicle?) beneath and boundless skies above, soaring and swelling soundscaping, and a lush, rich visual buffet all around, the energetic visuals spark curiosity and calm from the get. An opportunity to relax and sink into it or to explore non-stop, to meditate and slow down, breathe with the earth and plants. Inspired by the ritual practice of the Lenca women in Honduras, La Compostura de la Tierra, the “piece is a sacred homage to Mother Earth and the ancestral spirits that interweaves sacred knowledge with digital realities.”
A “cosmic exploration” and an ode to the artist’s home. An immersive way to render, in Marquez’s words, “a voice, a place and an identity to those who have been systematically “invisibilized” through fear, violence and neglect. One filled with lapping water and shooting stars, waving fronds and flowers galore. With filters layered on each other endlessly, patterns repeating, diverging, colliding. Chaos, beauty, and the raw power of nature, drawn out in eye-popping colors and rotating mandalas. A sacred geometry indeed, a meditative space and a literally stunning marriage of modern technology with ancient practices.
