"A building is a body. A cuff is a small building. The rules are the same."
In her studio, Calle Colima
A Thursday in May
24°C, the light cutting low through Roma Norte
Inès meets us at five with a pencil still behind her ear. The studio is one room — concrete floor, a single long table, three drawings pinned to a wall, otherwise nothing. There is a record on. We do not recognise it. She does not name it. The cuff is on her left wrist, the wrist she draws with, and she rotates it slowly as she talks, the way other people turn a pen.
The Architectural Cuff, photographed flat
"A wall holds weight. A cuff holds a wrist. The discipline is the same."
—Inès Lambert
She shows us a model — a chapel, in a town in Oaxaca, with a roof that was meant to be lower than it ended up. "The client wanted the sky," she says, "and so we gave the sky the roof." The plaster model is heavier than it looks. So is the cuff. We feel the comparison is not accidental.
A plaster model, half-finished
The conversation
Q.
You have called this piece "a building you can take off." What did you mean?
IN.
A wall holds weight. A cuff holds a wrist. Both are saying: here is a line that matters. The discipline is the same.
Q.
How does it sit when you work?
IN.
It is heavy enough that I am aware of it, but not so heavy that it interrupts. I think of it as a tuning fork for the day.
Q.
Why this one, when you own so little?
IN.
Because it answers more than one question. I can wear it to a foundation pour and to a wedding. I do not have to think about it twice.
That day — Inèshad with her
Wearing
A linen shirt belonging to her husband
Drinking
Mezcal, the bad kind, because the good kind 'is for the evening'
Reading
Berger's About Looking, ninth time
Playing
A record, unknown to us, in Portuguese
On the bench
A pencil. A pencil sharpener. A chapel
"I do not polish it. I want to see the time on it."
We walk out into the early evening. She stays at the door, watching us until we round the corner. When we look back, the cuff catches the streetlight: a line in the dark, and then nothing.
— In conversation withInès Lambert , Mexico City.
She wears
Molten Ore Ring
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