Aida Lizalde is the 2023 awardee of the 2023, $10,000 Yeck Purchase Award. In this recent exhibition,

Mar dormido, the artist considers the subtle registers of transformation that unfold over geological

time and observes the rhythms of erosion, burial, and celestial drift, positioning materials as quiet

record-keepers of cycles that often transcend human perception. The series of works included a range of ceramic vessels, sculptural forms, textiles, and found objects. They are a collaboration with materials and natural phenomena alike, acknowledging their capacity to record, respond, and transform under the forces of time,

sediment, decomposition, weathering, pressure, and heat. Some of the objects incorporate clay harvested from the Sunfair dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert, where the artists currently resides, engaging with the residue of an ancient, now dormant sea; others were buried or exposed to the elements for various periods, as acts of collaboration with the desert itself and the ghosts of its tides. Mar dormido—Spanish for “sleeping sea”—invokes the haunting presence of water in its absence. The exhibition asks how objects metabolize time, not through spectacle, but through the quiet vestiges of perpetual transformation.