Mauricio Samayoa's Memory Bundles: Archival Erasure and Identity at LEA Madrid

Salvadoran artist Mauricio Samayoa (b. 1989, San Vicente) completed a residency at Lab of Experimental Art (LEA) in Madrid, resulting in new works that explore memory, identity, and political trauma through deliberate erasure. His series 'Memory Bundles' seals personal documents—birth certificates, childhood drawings, photographs—into inaccessible packets using industrial glue, creating anti-archives that critique how power controls access to information. The series 'Bit by Bit' cuts paper into grids, transforming specific memories into abstract bitmaps. During the residency, Samayoa produced 'Alfombra de sal No. 1', a salt carpet referencing Salvadoran Holy Week traditions of ephemeral street carpets, and new drawings like 'Dibujo 4' (Árbol de fuego) and 'Dibujo 6', which reconstruct a childhood photograph while erasing his own figure. A conversation with curator Jorge de la Cruz and curator Josseline Pinto framed the work. Samayoa's practice responds to El Salvador's ongoing state of exception (since March 27, 2022), under President Nayib Bukele, which has seen over 81,900 detentions and 300+ deaths in custody, despite claims of reduced homicides. The artist, now based in Birmingham, uses his auto-exile to Buenos Aires and subsequent migration as a lens to interrogate identity, trauma, and the materiality of memory.