Looking with the Bone is a speculative video installation that explores the relationship between humans and chitons. Chitons—sometimes called “marine cockroaches”—are mollusks whose shells are made of aragonite, the same mineral that forms stalactites. Uniquely, chitons have thousands of microscopic eyes embedded in their shells. As a form of self-protection, they can regenerate new eyes when existing ones are lost or damaged in encounters with predators. These intertidal eyes are equipped with two lenses, that enable chitons to focus both above and below the water.

The work draws a parallel between this biological resilience and the Caribbean human, who—after centuries of exposure to the experiments of European modernity, including the extermination of Indigenous populations, colonization, forced relocation and enslavement, concentration camps, and totalitarian dictatorships—has begun to mutate, that is, to develop “bone” eyes. In this speculative vision, the Caribbean body generates thousands of chiton-like eyes, learning to “look with the bone.” Through this lens, Looking with the Bone critiques the terror-filled events that have shaped Caribbean history while inviting us to imagine new futures. How might we consider the sea as an extension of Caribbean territory and the human body with marine life as engaged in a symbiotic mutation?

Celia Irina González lives and works in Mexico City. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a master’s degree in visual anthropology from FLACSO Ecuador. She has participated in the exhibitions Emergent/cy at Entre Vienna in Austria; Cuba Dispersa (Cuba Dispersed) at Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit; Arte Latinoamericano en la colección del MEIAC at Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo in Badajoz; Sin Authorización: Contemporary Cuban Art at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York; Ojos de hueso at Galería Angeles Baños in Badajoz; ESOK: Jakarta Bienniale; the Kochi-Muziris Bienniale in Kerala; the Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Bienniale; and Rendez-Vous at the Lyon Biennial. She has received a Botín Foundation Visual Art Grant and a Grants & Commissions Program award from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO). She has been in residence at the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen residency program in Berlin; the El Ranchito Residency at Matadero Madrid in collaboration with Artista x Artista; a KulturKontakt Austria program residency in Vienna; and the Skills Bienniale hosted by Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. 

The 2025 CCI + WOPHA Fellowship is presented by PAMM’s Caribbean Cultural Institute in collaboration with Women Photographers International Archive and through the support of El Espacio 23.