My Device-Body Consumes One Lithium Battery a Day: Lucia R. at Salón Silicón

Lucia says that (Li)temia, the long-term project from which her current show Litemia .01 at Salón Silicón emerges, began the moment she was told she would have to take lithium every day for the rest of her life. Born into a generation that has lost both the practical and cognitive ability to imagine the future, she sought to soothe the anxiety triggered by her diagnosis by exploring the volumetric materiality of the substance.

Lithium, with trajectories that are relatively distinct but never fully separate, has been extracted, processed, and used in both the production of psychotropic medication and the manufacturing of batteries for cell phones and electric cars. Mi cuerpo dispositivo consume una batería diaria [100 días] [My Device-Body Consumes One Battery a Day [100 Days]] (2025)—a curtain-like installation composed of one hundred discarded lithium batteries—visually equates the element’s two primary uses: this is what a hundred days of the rest of her life looks like.

my body as salt flat deposit*

The exhibition also includes two sculptural series. Escrituras mnemónicas [Mnemonic Writings] (2025) brings together ceramic tablets embedded with connectors from the batteries used in the other works, along with emptied medication blister packs. Alluding to both microchips and human bodies, they suggest that electronic circuits and chemical memory are parallel forms of storage.

The Serie no-dispositivo [Non-Device Series] (2024–2025), composed of small ceramic rectangles altered with fire, aluminum, electronic waste, or graphite from spent batteries, explores the tactile and affective relationship we maintain with our phones. One piece preserves the repeated imprint of a password; another, the gesture of infinite scrolling. Despite their familiar dimensions, these objects refuse to light up or work.

lithium as energy
lithium to function

Functionality is a key concept in Litemia .01, as well as a central axis in the micro-macro relation the artist seeks to highlight. Both her body and the mobile devices we spend most of our waking hours with rely on lithium to function. As danie valencia sepúlveda notes in the exhibition text: “lithium reflects the logic of modern-colonial systems that need and demand everything—minerals, bodies, technologies—to keep functioning, even as the promise of stability collapses into ruin.”

In its saline and metallic forms, lithium allows us to regulate energy flows and mood states. And yet—like its human and non-human users—it remains an unstable element. el grafito contiene al litio, el litio me contiene a mí [Graphite contains lithium, lithium contains me] (2025), a pair of drawings made with graphite extracted from batteries on cotton paper, reflects the artist’s growing identification with the substance.

a lithemia monitors my blood
user of this psychotropic drug

In less than a square meter, Imagen intermedial del litio [Todo lo que sé sobre el litio me lo contó alguien o lo aprendí en internet] [Intermedial Image of Lithium [Everything I Know About Lithium I Was Told or Learned Online]] (2025) traces the links between the global energy market and systematic abuses of Indigenous and rural communities in Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina; the unnoticed presence of lithium in products like Vichy Catalan mineral water; the irony behind the Mexican state company Litiomx’s slogan, “the state-run company to exploit white gold”; as well as lithium’s medieval therapeutic uses and its current psychopharmacological applications. In short, it maps the complex and entangled relationships that make lithium—as the audiovisual piece Desdoblar (2025), shown across six mobile devices, asserts—a substance that wounds and heals.

delirium
delithium
delict

Lia Quezada

Translated to English by Luis Sokol

* This quote, just like the others, is from desdoblar (2025), audiovisual piece by Lucia R. included in (Li)temia.