The Fire Theory: MI CASA NO ES SU CASA

28.07.2026 - 18.10.2026
With The Fire Theory

The exhibition MI CASA NO ES SU CASA is inspired by Eduardo Chang’s work, Residente permanente por vínculo (2009), that explores the contradictions of borders, migration, displacement, and trans-territoriality. Presented within a domestic apartment setting, the exhibition reflects both the collective and intimate emotional realities of Salvadoran migration.

The exhibition moves from documentary practices to metaphorical and poetic approaches through diverse artistic formats. José Cabezas contributes documentary photographs of migrant caravans and deportations, alongside analog landscape photographs that portray the beauty and fragility of El Salvador. Lucy Tomasino’s Horizontes documents social and physical borders through unstable photographic prints made with dyes extracted from flowers growing behind the walls of upper-class residences.

At the apartment entrance, a welcome mat embroidered with the phrase “MI CASA NO ES SU CASA” ironically subverts traditional ideas of hospitality and acceptance. Gerardo Gómez’s paintings shift the exhibition away from photography and toward expressive depictions of ordinary Salvadoran life through exaggerated perspectives and personal observation.

Danny Zavaleta and Mauricio Esquivel present a View-Master device combining memory, migration, violence, and intimacy. The work depicts the artist skateboarding in front of gang-marked architecture in Ilopango, referencing Zavaleta’s later asylum process and permanent residency in Canada. Facing this piece are Antonio Romero’s charcoal portraits, which explore fragmented identity, surveillance, concealment, and the psychological effects of displacement and authoritarianism.

Between Romero’s portraits, Lissania Vatra’s video performance of digging with a spoon reflects instability, fragility, and the desire to be somewhere else. Josefina Paz’s work in the dunes of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, addresses migration as a space of resilience and transition between territories, life, and death.

Verónica Vides’s work connects migration to ecological survival, presenting humans as part of a regenerative natural ecosystem rather than as extractors. Through the documentation of a performance in Madrid, she camouflages herself with natural elements gathered from the environment, evoking themes of adaptation and survival.

The exhibition concludes in the apartment kitchen with a video by Víctor Cruz and Hugo Portillo showing a banana plant standing in a snowy landscape. The work poetically evokes migration, nostalgia, and the emotional experience of inhabiting foreign spaces.

Artists: Eduardo Chang, Lucy Tomasino, Gerardo Gómez, José Cabezas, Lissania Vatra, Josefina Paz, Antonio Romero, Danny Zavaleta, Verónica Vides, Víctor Cruz & Hugo Portillo

The Fire Theory are: Mauricio Kabistán, Melissa Guevara, Mauricio Esquivel and Victor Rodríguez

Open from 28 July 2026, by appointment only:
thefiretheory(at)gmail.com
+49 171 4717 408

Address: Grainauer Straße 19, 10777 Berlin

Picture credit: Mi casa no es su casa, by Eduardo Chang, crochet by Marta Esquivel, picture: The Fire Theory