2020-21
Ongoing project connected to ideas of colonial botany, plants as historical agents and the influence of science in shaping the roots of Western-culture’s relationship to nature.
Includes an installation of plants native to the exhibition venue, a series of botanical drawings of these plants and a video performance. The works have been presented in different locations across South America, featuring indigenous plants that bear the names of historical colonial figures as part of their scientific nomenclature. (i.e. the Achiote plant Bixa orellana, as named after conquistador Francisco de Orellana, or the Mutisia acuminata, as named after Celestimo Mutis). The project draws connections between forms of scientific taxonomy and the semantic as a symbolic mechanism of cultural domination, appropriation and of re-writing history.
The project was conceived for a series of exhibitions that travelled across South America, and researched the history of some of the especific plants of each region.
