Cristina Ochoa

Category: Performance

  • The Taking of the Tea

    Exposition name: The Taking of the Tea
    Location: Salon Regional de Artistas
    Date: 2009

    Description: The performance features a character resembling a pin-up housewife who serves coca and poppy cakes along with tea, playfully subverting traditional notions and stigmas surrounding the consumption of coca. By presenting these substances in a domestic, almost nostalgic context, the work reimagines their cultural roles and invites reflection on normalization, colonial narratives, and plant agency. Presented at the Salón Regional de Artistas under the curatorship of Mariángela Méndez and Verónica Wiman.

  • The Miraculous Recipe

    Exposition name: The Miraculous Recipe
    Location: Mexican American Institute of Relations. Monterrey, México. | Mauricio Badillo’s Garden, Mexico City. | Pereira Art Museum, Pereira, Colombia.
    Date: 2011

  • Practical Paganism

    Exposition name: Practical Paganism
    Location: Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California
    Date: 2016

    Description: Curated by Emanuela Ines Dunand, in partnership with Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro (Paris) and Muebles Sullivan (Mexico City). The 100-square-meter space functioned as an interactive laboratory featuring collections of plants, mushrooms, hydrolats, and bacterial cultures engaged in microbial “battles”—such as yogurt vs. cheese or yeast interactions. Additional chemical and botanical pairings included peyote and nutmeg, sotol and serpent, rosemary, salvia divinorum, tobacco, ants, eucalyptus, and more. Visitors were invited to observe and even consume some of the experimental preparations, activating the installation as a participatory space of fermentation, transformation, and sensory inquiry. The second part of the project, titled Magic Substances, presented a series of experiments involving biological and botanical agents to explore the creative and transformative forces of nature. Rooted in daily life and spiritual inquiry, the work highlights how bacteria and plants carry generative power, revealing new understandings of interspecies relations. Ochoa and Sumi approach transformation as both biological process and metaphysical potential, blending scientific experimentation with mythology, folk wisdom, and reflections on biopolitics. The installation invites reflection on the deep interconnectedness of life, suggesting that transformation—at every level—is essential to awareness, healing, and creation.

  • Pharmakon

    Exposition name: Pharmakon
    Location: Centre Cultural Maristany, Barcelone    
    Date: 2016
    Curators: Juan Canela, Andrea Novoa  and Verónica Valentini

    Description: PHARMAKON is an ongoing artistic research project exploring the boundaries between pharmacy and the use of psychoactive substances. It opens a critical dialogue around the concepts of “drug” and “medicine,” functioning as an experimental laboratory that investigates the dual nature of healing and toxicity—where cure and poison often coexist.

  • Future Goddess

    Exposition name: Future Goddesses
    Type: Nano counter ADN reader.
    Materials: Biotech
    Date: 2019

    Description: The Mayan legend of the Ololiuhqui or Xtabentún flower tells of two sisters: Xtabay, kind, generous, and misunderstood for her open-heartedness, and Utz-Colel, praised for her purity but inwardly cold and envious. When Xtabay died, her body released a sweet fragrance, and from it bloomed a delicate white flower—the sacred Xtabentún, used ritually by the Maya for its psychoactive seeds containing LSA. She became a compassionate goddess, guardian of desperate souls. Jealous, Utz-Colel vowed that a more beautiful flower would grow from her body. Upon her death, a stunning cactus appeared, but with a foul odor—the Tsacam, reflecting her true nature. Furious, she pleaded with the Lords of the Underworld and was allowed to return in Xtabay’s form, but as a demon. Since then, she appears beneath the Ceiba tree, luring intoxicated men into the underworld. The legend contrasts superficial virtue with genuine compassion and honors the spiritual power of love and generosity.

  • Psychotropical Apothecary (Pharmakon)

    Exposition name: Psychotropical Apothecary  (Pharmakon)
    Type: Different art spaces
    Date: 2020

    Description: Mobile and permanent installation that brings together tinctures, micro-dosing practices, and live performance in an experiential and participatory format. Since its inception in 2020, it has been presented in various art spaces, inviting more than 3,000 participants—99.9% of whom have reported positive effects. This ongoing project offers a curated selection of plant-based preparations designed to heal the body, expand consciousness, and support neuro-hacking. Drawing from ancestral herbal knowledge and contemporary experimentation, the apothecary includes tinctures and extracts of Calea zacatechichi (the “herb of dreams,” used to induce vivid dreaming and activate the pineal gland), Psilocybe cubensis Mexicana (San Isidro mushrooms, known for boosting serotonin.

  • 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