El Projecto Milagro typifies dialogical practice: Crujido’s goal was not to shock or improve her collaborators, and although the project involved the production of a physical object, its intended audience consisted of the community of laborers with whom Crujido collaborated. Moreover, the form of the piece, the efficiency with which it responded to a specific aspect of the workers’ experience, was founded on, and preceded by, a process of dialogue and collective exchange. Although the project made use of Crujido’s skills as a sculptor (in the design and fabrication of the concrete forms), it required an equally important capacity for active listening and empathetic identification, a willingness to let the laborers guide her, rather than an imposition of her own a priori critical or formal values on them.

Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Conversation in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)

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