Ćrbol de agua InstalaciĆ³n con telas imprimadas con plantas medicinales, Yauhtli, Muicle, calea zacatechichi, curcuma, spirulina guarumbo, guajes, capulĆn, palma chit, y otras plantas del monte. Espejos rotos y proyecciĆ³n de luz
La pieza funciona como un portal del tiempo, que lleva a los visitantes a una dimensiĆ³n natural. Consiste en una serie de telas imprimadas con estas plantas que respiran vapores medicinales, y evocan a las plantas de la selva. distribuidas en una de las casas en obra gris de Nek HĆ”. El movimiento del viento y la luz proponen una atmĆ³sfera que lleva a pensar en un futuro en armonĆa con la naturaleza por medio de reflejos, impresiones y aromas.
To bring back the spirits of the seeds.Ā Ā āThat was the task ordered by the elders, the taitas up in the heavens and down in the Earth, as grandfather Berito Kuwaruwa told me when he consulted with them. They said this job has to be done, we need to bring back the spirit of the seeds. This seed is part of the law of origin.ā (Cristina Ochoa)
Today Mayan KŹ¼icheŹ¼ and Mexica peoples still read the future in the seeds of ColorĆn. Across her conversations, Cristina met Tata CristĆ³bal Cojti who reads the ColorĆn seed in Guatemala. It holds both the beginning of the world and what is to come. The knowledges of how to listen to the seeds is passed on from generation to generation. Yet, they can get lost if no one is left who remembers. Learning from elders in Tlapacoyan, in Veracruz, Mexico, Cristina met traditional healer Juana GonzĆ”lez who still works closely with ColorĆn, both as medicine and as oracle. Ā
3Ā Seed as Medicine
If consumed, the seeds of ColorĆn are poisonous, yet the flowers are edible and delicious.Ā The seedās toxicity is hypnotic, it is an anaesthetic and relieves pain, yet it is also psychoactive. In its sedating, paralysing ways the seed of ColorĆn puts time on hold. It is a time traveller in many ways, also into stillness and paralysis.Ā
According to Mayan practices, medicine goes where medicine is needed. Healing seeps where healing is needed. Might the Cosmic Seed Basket have been called to Kewās gardens in Wakehurst to sense a healing of the connection of plant science to the cultural knowledge of plants?
4Ā Seed as RecordĀ
As pointed out by the Ancestors that Berito Kuwaruwa spoke with, the seeds have been called here to rebuild connection, to restore and heal the spirit of those seeds, of the same kind, that are held in the Millennium Seed Bank, a few minuteās walk from the Cosmic Seed Basket.
These seeds are frozen in a different way, at -18C in cold storage chambers their metabolic lives are on hold. In glass jars, they rest inside the seed bank, the most biodiverse place on the planet, where jar afterĀ jar is working towards creating an archive of the genetic biodiversity of wild plants.
5 Ā Seed as Collaborator
The teams at Kewās Millennium Seed Bank, which holds many records of wild seeds globally, work directly with partners in countries of origin to deposit seeds. Through the Cosmic Seed Basket, Cristina has started a conversation with seed scientists Slyvia Bacci and Tiziana Ulian on a collaboration with Juana Gonzalez, the traditional healer in Veracruz, on future collections of ColorĆn into the seedbank. Juana harvests ColorĆn seeds only on specific dates with the right words and intentions, closely observing the tree over time. This potential future collaboration would be one way of exploring how Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices can guide global conservation projects such as the Millennium Seed Bank.
6 Ā Seed as Portal
The Cosmic Seed Basket includes twenty woven nets and small hanging sculptures. These are made of ColorĆn seeds and string, creating spider-weblike organic patterns. These woven nets are at once trans-dimensional portals and amulets of protection.Ā
7 Ā Seed as Memory
In spring this year, DoƱa Juana and Cristina went to a specific ColorĆn tree in Veracruz to make an offering, to speak with the tree before collecting its seeds. DoƱa Juana shared thatĀ āThe tree wants to be remembered, itās dying or disappearing, it wants its seeds to be planted in a special placeā. This is what DoƱa Juana wants for her community, too ā to be remembered.Ā
8 Ā Seed as Kin
Through the stories of DoƱa Juana, kinship with seeds emerges as a link between generations where communities act as the guardians of seeds across the past, present and future. Across Cristinaās practice, and the many conversations and knowledge that are woven into the Cosmic Seed Basket, ColorĆn seeds also become connections across cultures and practices, across knowledge systems and relations to the living world.
9 Ā Seed as Future Plant
A seed is a promise that hasnāt happened yet. Hinting at the future lifeworlds contained in each seed, a small ColorĆn tree sits inside the Cosmic Seed Basketās soft fabric shape of ColorĆn. Throughout the exhibition, this small plant that was grown by Jo and her team in Kewās nursery in Wakehurst, is a reflection of the promise of seeds. Gently swaying in the wind, it feels almost animated by the bio-sonification sounds that are playing inside the seed basket, a rhythm of future life, of awaiting germination. After the exhibition, it will be planted in Wakehurst, continuing the story, song and call of the ColorĆn seed. A reminder of this journey and what it might mean to return the spirit of the seeds.
10 Ā Seed as Voice
Inside the Cosmic Seed Basket, you can hear the voice of DoƱa Juana, describing her relation to the ColorĆn seed, its medicinal power and a tree that is very close to her heart. Yet thereās also another voice present. Almost bird-like the twitching sounds of a ColorĆn seed itself can be heard. Cristina asked DoƱa Juana for permission if the sound of the seed could be recorded and listened to. Recorded with sound engineer Eduardo Benitez through an electrode, the sound reflects the electric impulses and frequencies inside the side, asking what it might mean to imagine this as a voice, a voice of origins and future paths.Ā
A few hundred metres from the Cosmic Seed Basket, in Wakehurstās forested garden, deep underground, are the remains of a WW2 listening station. Extending the imagination of what it might mean to broadcast (literally, to scatter seeds) the voice of the ColorĆn seed, this abandoned listening station offers an invitation to imagine who else might be listening to the seedās song.
11Ā Seed as Traveller
Through the work Kew is doing on seed longevity and viability, another offshoot has emerged from the Cosmic Seed Basket. ColorĆn seeds might travel to the International Space Station. Theyāll be on this journey as both carriers of cultural and natural knowledge, a powerful example of how separations between nature and culture are a construct of a very specific Eurocentric knowledge system. Who might eventually come across these seeds?
12 Ā Seed as Ritual
DoƱa Juana works with the ColorĆn seed in a variety of ways, to treat evil eye, to support endeavours, to release darkness and depression.Ā
On June 24th, hold two seeds together, hold them up to your ear, and you will hear them, āthank youā.
13 Ā Seed as Future, Seed as Beginning
Dr. Marleen Boschen Post-doctoral Fellow: Future Ecologies of Art Interdisciplinary Research Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Inside this structure build with bamboo, iron and natural dyed coYon fabrics, with Colorin seeds, Dragons Blood, achiote (annayo), grana cochinilla, moons blood, zapote. The work of weaving of 20 nets of seeds are trans dimensional portals and amulets of protec1on. You ļ¬nd the sound of the Erythrina americana seed, taken from the electrical resistance thru a vegetal sound translator, the sound has a bird style codes, and Mrs Juana Gonzalez, voice in Spanish, telling her relationship with the seed and the tree. Sheās a traditional Healer from Tlapacoyan, Veracruz. Who take us in her narrative to the seed as an interstoce on dimensional passage to 1mes, honoring her culture and the law of origin of American people, or Abya Yala. We will broadcast from this cero temporal seed sta1on and also grow a plant of erythrina americana the piece will be vanished and disappeared. Cris1na Ochoa
Tlazolteotl es la madre transformadora en la cultura nahuatl, la madre de la medicina, de las plantas, de la composta, del suelo, el temazcal, el tejido, el algodĆ³n, la que provoca la lujuria y la perdona. Vive en el rumbo del oeste con sus cuatro hermanas que perdieron la vida en el parto, es la sangre que recorre nuestras venas , tlazol es amor, los espaƱoles lo interpretaron como residuo, tierra. La devoradora de inmundicias, el amor transformador.
wall intervention
Tlazolteotl is the transformation mother, the compost, eating the dirt, is the love of earth, sexual and weat, temptress, weaving relationships, the medicine giver, the listener of the sins, the healer, the wise, the diviner, temazcal mother, corn mother.
INVOCATION TO TLALZOLTEOLT
I will listen to you, I will come to lick all your filth.
Ixhuina , take me, cleanse my flesh, pain, make me come and feel, cover me with your cotton, give me your blood, help me give birth, snake woman, take my pain, with every drop of sweat, with every moan. Fertile, abundant, orgasmic, seductive woman, earth, moon, carries the darkness, in her hand is the blue and yellow water, purifies and disappears dirt, transmits and shares, change everything.
Listen to my confessions, my secrets, protector of the desperate, of the lives of mothers, of births, of vaginas. Goddess of cotton, weave my broken threads, write the secrets of sinners, covered with the skin of a human victim and the tail of a snake. Queen of the transforming sacrifice that forgives sins, beautiful woman of cotton, goddess of healing, of plants, of sweat, of steam baths. Great fortune teller, give me the vision, mother of corn, mother of flowers, with the tail of a coral snake, the entrails and the feather of a turkey. Cleanse me with your earth, give me deep healing, between your open legs, make me reborn, with sacred plants sing in my ear with that dirty voice, while the stench transforms my body into fertile soil. Bite me, eat me, lick me, drink me, suck me, swallow me, listen to me, clean me, change me, take me out, let me grow leaves, let me turn into a fungus, let the microbes speak to me, let the bugs, flies and worms come, until I am light and fly in the feathers of the trees.
I hear the flowers, I hear the fruits, I hear your moans, I feel your heartbeats, the seed of your residue is born, in a spasm, life is born from your filth.
I give everything, I change everything, I take away everything, I heal everything, convulsing and crackling, everything heals.
Listen to the songs of death, listen to the pain of life, listen to the flower, listen to the mango, listen to the heart. The jicama sounds, the potato sounds, the cactus sings, the pineapple moans, suck, eat, enjoy, play, sing, jump, cry and laugh, writhe mortally, roll around in the dirt, you are the same, putrid and delicious. Feel the earth under your feet, mother I feel you under my feet, mother I am earth under your feet.
CO
Paisaje, una historia de Tlazolteotl
Pinturas acrĆlicas, dibujo a lĆ”piz sobre papel. 6 piezas de 45 cms x 30 cms cada una. 2024
Reflejo vegetal es una serie de instalaciones compuestas por espejos fragmentados y plantas vivas. Las superficies reflejantes multiplican partes del jardĆn, la arquitectura y los cuerpos de quienes recorren el espacio. Las plantas crecen entre los fragmentos y modifican la composiciĆ³n durante el tiempo de exhibiciĆ³n.
La obra cuestiona la separaciĆ³n entre el espacio construido y el mundo vegetal. El reflejo deja de producir una imagen completa y presenta una percepciĆ³n cambiante, compuesta por fragmentos de luz, hojas y movimiento. La instalaciĆ³n forma parte de la investigaciĆ³n sobre jardines, transformaciĆ³n material y convivencia entre organismos vivos y estructuras humanas.
Cristina Ochoa ofrecerĆ” una consulta sobre herbolaria y plantas a las personas interesadas, explicando las propiedades y los efectos de las tinturas y recetas que componen la botica Pharmakon, utilizando un botiquĆn herbal con plantas como pericĆ³n, calea zacatechichi, sinicuichi, entre otras, que permiten expandir la conciencia, incidir en el Ć”nimo y la salud. Cada consulta tendrĆ” una duraciĆ³n de 15 minutos como mĆ”ximo.
