Juan Pablo Arce Cardozo

Sometimes I believe
I was born to guard
what has no voice.
I gather the pieces of the world,
its scattered fragments of memory,
ruins that still palpitate.
And in each one I believe I find
the residue of a ghost,
a germinal shiver
that resists oblivion.
And yet, the task weighs upon me.
There are days when I cannot touch anything
without corrupting it,
because everything returns to me
the unbearable touch of what is lost.
I have made of my house
a place for permanent mourning.
A house where things learn
to die with slowness.
And in the midst of that stupor,
when objects open like polyps,
they let their melancholy emerge:
the unbearable touch,
an empty shell, an extinct sea,
a fragment of bone,
an emblem traced
by a phantom finger.
And slowly,
I too wear away.
Because every relic I keep
consumes a part of my soul.
Each fragment demands of me
a sacrifice without an altar.
These ribs are merely
a border,
a border between these two borders:
the desire that believes it retains
and oblivion that inevitably devours.
For there is no such thing as home.
Only places — brief, porous —
where slowly you and I dissolve.
Ah!
everything I touch
withers.
And yet,
I keep touching.
I gather what the world discards:
the limping, the broken,
the asymmetric, the monstrous,
all that will never
be touched by the light
of redemption.
Carefully,
I arrange it, admire the patina of its lament,
and let it sleep beneath my arm.
And sometimes,
in the twilight of this world,
objects return to me their murmur,
a faint voice, almost imperceptible.
Then I understand
that something sacred still remains
in the radiance of these ruins.
Berlin, Autumn 2025

(La Paz, Bolivia)
Artist, cultural activist, collector, and independent curator.
Residing in Berlin since 2006.