Category: Gardens
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Garden of Oblivion
Exposition name: Garden of Oblivion
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A Study About Brugmansias
Exposition name: A Study About Brugmansias
Materials: Watercolor and Brugmansia water on cotton paper
Dimension: 50 cm by 40 cm & 70 cm by 90 cm
Date: 2019
Description: Evolved into multiple living spaces during the LILHA Residency Program in Nayarit, Mexico, in 2019. Together with the local community of San Francisco, we revitalized four separate gardens through a collaborative planting process. Plants were gathered through donations and exchanges, with contributions from participants who responded to open calls to join the collective effort of planting and regeneration. -
Garden of Hope
Exposition name: Garden of Hope
Type: San Francisco, Nayarit
Collaboration with: Neil Pyatt
Date: 2019
Description: Evolved into multiple living spaces during the LILHA Residency Program in Nayarit, Mexico, in 2019. Together with the local community of San Francisco, we revitalized four separate gardens through a collaborative planting process. Plants were gathered through donations and exchanges, with contributions from participants who responded to open calls to join the collective effort of planting and regeneration. -
Equinoctial Mini Milpa
Exposition name: Equinoctial Mini Milpa
Location: México City
Date: Mar 2020
Description: The garden on the terrace of the building where I live began on March 21, 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown. In response to the uncertainty and isolation, I decided to create a pandemic garden on the rooftop—a living experiment rooted in the ancestral model of the milpa. I planted a variety of edible vegetables, grains, fruits, and medicinal herbs: corn, beans, pumpkins, amaranth, passion fruit, pineapples, watermelon, potatoes, muicle, aloe, mastuerzo, onions, garlic, estafiate, vaporub, rosemary, sugarcane, sage, damiana, cedrón, jasmine, chili peppers, brugmansias, peyote, and marijuana, among more than 100 other species. This mini milpa has been continuously documented for over a year, showing how the garden evolves, grows, and produces through the seasons. With minimal resources, it has yielded several harvests, becoming an ongoing act of resistance, sustainability, and care. The compost used is made from our own organic kitchen waste, closing the cycle of nourishment and regeneration. Some of the equinoctial harvests have included pumpkins, tomatoes, beans, corn, beets, and amaranth—fruits of a small ecosystem cultivated in resilience and intention. -
Arafura – Garden of Psychotropical Hope
Exposition name: Arafura – Garden of Psychotropical Hope (Pharmakon)
Location: Popotla, Mexico City
Date: 2021
Description: Design and production of the garden as a living art work, from the star of the rebuilding of the house, now a cultural art center dedicated to residencies for art curators, artist and research in art and ecofeminism.
Related external links:
PHARMAKON: Jardín de la Esperanza Psicotropical by Arafura MX
https://www.arafura.mx/pharmakon.html
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Entreminas Garden
Exposition name: Entreminas Garden
Location: Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City
Curator: Mauricio Marcin
Date: 2021
Description: A garden donated from my mini milpa and terrace collection was installed inside the museum exhibition, creating a living, interactive space. Visitors were invited to participate by exchanging plants and seeds, and by caring for a diverse selection of over 30 species—including passionflowers (Passifloras), Brugmansias, aloe, sugar cane, and more—transforming the exhibition into a communal act of cultivation, reciprocity, and shared stewardship. -
Forget Me Not
Exposition name: Forget Me Not
Location: Nina Menocal’s Gallery, Mexico City
Curator: Nancy Mookina
Date: Oct 2021
Description: Garden intervention with no me olvides plants at Nina Menocal’s Gallery in Mexico City, part of the exhibition Nuevo verdor, Curated by Nancy Mookina. -
Bhang
Exposition name: Bhang
Location: Multiple, México City
In collaboration with: Ariel Orozco
Date: 2021
Description: The Pharmakon Psychotropical Garden project brought together visionary art, ancient plant knowledge, and experimental cooking in a multisensory exploration of altered states and healing traditions. Among its highlights were the Paintings Under Four Grams, created during guided experiences with San Isidro mushrooms in collaboration with artists Ariel Orozco and Izq, capturing the intricate visions and emotional landscapes induced by psilocybin. Alongside this, the garden featured Cannabic Recipes, including Shiva’s Beverage, one of the oldest known cannabis preparations traced back to the Vedas over a thousand years before Christ. According to legend, Shiva, after a quarrel with his wife Pavarti, retreated to rest beneath a ganja tree; upon awakening, he was soothed and uplifted by the plant’s effect. Enchanted by its calming power, he incorporated it into all his recipes, starting with Bhang—a sacred drink traditionally made from crushed Indian nuts, yak milk, and cannabis. This preparation remains a ritual offering during Maha Shivaratri, the annual celebration in honor of the deity, and serves as a cultural anchor for the ongoing dialogue between plants, spirit, and creative expression explored in this psychotropical initiative.
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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 -
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