Category: 2023
-
Pharmakon: Pharmakos
Exposition name: Pharmakon: Pharmakos
-
The Hearth of the Forest
PHOTO: UNAM, 2023
Exposition name: The Heart of the Forest
Location: Palacio de la Escuela de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Date: Until September 2023
Description: Pharmakon explores the blurred boundaries between cure and poison, medicine and drug. Through a vibrant collection of more than 50 entheogenic plant specimens gathered from urban sidewalks across Colombia and Mexico—mounted on colorful papers—and a series of drawings and paintings, the work opens a critical dialogue around pharmacology, ancestral herbalism, and the political and spiritual dimensions of substances. Conceived as an experimental laboratory, the project reclaims Indigenous and popular knowledge systems, positioning the vegetal world as a site of healing, resistance, and psychotropical hope.
Related external articles:
– Cristina Ochoa: El corazón del monte
https://fdr.at/en/project/die-zukunft-beginnt-heute/
Back to the Art Expositions List >> -
Mirror Gardens Installations
Exposition name: Mirror Gardens Instalations
Location: SOMA Auction, Chapultepec. México City.
Date: 2023
Description: interested in how cultural myths are produced and absorbed—whether as tools of manipulation and power, or as quests for identity and certainty. Her work explores a wide range of myth-making sources, from religion and fairy tales to advertising, social behaviors, clichés, gender, sex, and politics. Myths, in her view, are consumed and reproduced to the point of becoming routine. Her practice is multidisciplinary and examines desire as both a creative and destructive force, aimed at producing altered states and ruptures that lead to subjective, collective, and sometimes collaborative aesthetic experiences.
She studies how desire circulates as a form of value within the systems that shape human relationships, and how these dynamics often result in violence through processes of negotiation and representation. These forms are continuously drawn, redrawn, and imprinted as boundaries of human behavior. In addition to her artistic production, Ochoa has collaborated on curatorial, writing, and teaching projects. She completed the full educational program at SOMA and has been involved in initiatives such as Taller Multinacional. Since 2005, she has exhibited her work in museums, galleries, institutions, and independent spaces across Colombia, Mexico, and internationally.
Related external articles:
– Integrante PES: Cristina Ochoa. Article by SOMA Mexico:
https://somamexico.org/archivo/persona?id=1436&nombre=Cristina%20Ochoa -
Pharmakon: Street Herbaries
PHOTO: PHARMAKON AT SOMERS GALLERY 2023 LONDON
Exposition name: Pharmakon: Street Herbaries
Location: Multiple: London, Vienna, Mexico City, Barcelona…
Date: 2023
Description: Pharmakon explores the blurred boundaries between cure and poison, medicine and drug. Through a vibrant collection of more than 50 entheogenic plant specimens gathered from urban sidewalks across Colombia and Mexico—mounted on colorful papers—and a series of drawings and paintings, the work opens a critical dialogue around pharmacology, ancestral herbalism, and the political and spiritual dimensions of substances. Conceived as an experimental laboratory, the project reclaims Indigenous and popular knowledge systems, positioning the vegetal world as a site of healing, resistance, and psychotropical hope. -
Steyregg-Festival der Regionen
PHOTO: Cristina Ochoa 2023
Exposition name: Steyregg-Festival Austria 2023
Location: Steyregg-Festival, Vienna
Date: 2023
Description: Cristina Ochoa connects questions surrounding species extinction with herbalism and pharmacy, engaging with cultural myths and ceremonies as well as their interpretation and assimilation within communities. Her practice draws upon her academic background in fine art, cultural management, copyright, and Mexican art history, which she studied in Colombia and Mexico.
Related external articles:
– Steyregg-Festival Austria 2023
https://fdr.at/en/project/die-zukunft-beginnt-heute/ -
Readings from the Garden
Exposition name: Readings from the Garden
Location: Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City
Date: 2nd September 2023
Curator: Vivian Abeshushan
Other artists: Mónica Nepote, Raquel Salgado, Carla Faesler y Verónica Gerber
Description: Participatory event within the exhibition “The Garden Has No Fences,” coordinated by writer Vivian Abenshushan. Women artists from diverse disciplines will gather in a “Circle of the Word” to present spoken or performe -
Invocation to Tlazolteotl
Exposition name: Invocation to Tlazolteotl
Location: P////AKT Foundation, Amsterdam
Date: 2023 – 2024
Curator: Masha Domracheva
Description: An installation composed of fabrics, soil, fruits, plants, and ritual offerings. Central elements include a suspended palm object, 52 watercolors depi -
En-Chanted Garden
Exposition name: En-Chanted Garden by Azulik
Location: Tulúm, México
Date: 2023 – Ongoing
Curator: Marcello Dantas
Description: More than an installation, it is for Cristina Ochoa a sanctuary of biodiversity, a vegetal pharmacy, a trans-disciplinary learning space, and a site for ancestral memory and ecological regeneration. Functioning as a temporal portal, the garden invites us to learn from Indigenous cosmogonies and reimagine collective futures in harmony with the rhythms of nature. It embodies ancestral technologies as tools for reconnection with the sacred. The garden is inhabited by diverse life forms—plants, fungi, lichens, pollinators, insects, birds, reptiles, bats—and enriched by the presence of Mayan spiritual leaders, x-meens, and herbalists from various traditions. Artists, artisans, scientists, and seekers converge here to share knowledge and c