Cristina Ochoa

Cristina Ochoa

Seed Oracle | Backroom

2023

For The Backroom, the artist presents an oracle made with corn and colorín seeds, drawing from ancestral Mayan divination techniques, blended with the types of oracles that exist on the internet and are used with much greater frequency. In this way, beyond simply presenting archival material or creating a new piece, the artist combines and reinterprets two references that belong to different cultural registers but have been equally essential to her work.

At the same time, Ochoa presents photographs of seed capsules she recently created during a residency in Tulum, which she later buried as part of a seed consecration ceremony performed by an elderly Mayan priest. The photographs of these capsules function as the starting point for a visual and personal germplasm bank that the artist will develop over the following months on this same platform. As the seeds germinate, Ochoa will add more documents and information to document this process which, alongside natural growth, represents the development of multiple forms of information, ranging from genetic to cultural, social, and spiritual.

  • Museo Tamayo de arte contemporáneo - ICI
  • Gardens
  • Oráculo digital, texto, dibujos y vídeo
  • Website
  • Curator: Andrés Valtierra Colaborators: Sfer ik Azulik Don Valerio Canché Esteban German

They are a series of ceramic pieces that contain seeds meant to be buried underground, referencing Andy Warhol’s time capsules. These capsules function as natural devices of memory and information, held within seeds that preserve DNA, biological history, and possible futures. These devices help safeguard seeds that are on the verge of disappearing.

 

The first seed capsules were part of an exercise carried out in November 2021 at the University of Quindío in Colombia, as part of the seminar La montaña del sur. During this workshop with art students, both transgenic and native seeds were identified, and a package containing seeds, descriptions, and personal contributions from participants was buried. This capsule was intended to be opened in early November 2022.

The second capsules, created in collaboration with the ceramics workshop at Azulik Tulum for an exhibition at SFER IK Museion, consisted of four double containers housing different types of seeds. Among them are seeds from the milpa, or human survival system, including corn kernels representing the four cardinal directions, along with ibes, ayocotes, and squash. These were buried as part of a seed consecration ceremony performed by Don Valerio Canché Yax, President of the Association of Mayan Elders and Priests. This ceremony can be seen in the video Seed Oracle.

The other capsules contain seeds from the life of the Maya forest—ramón, tepezcohuite, yarimo, and siricote—as well as sacred seeds such as ceiba, corn, and ololiuhquis.

The seed capsules will continue to be buried wherever possible and appropriate, with the purpose of safeguarding plant biological memory as part of an ongoing struggle for sovereignty.

 

Cristina Ochoa

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