Cristina Ochoa

Category: Sensory

  • 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.

  • In Vino Veritas

    Exposition name: In Vino Veritas
    Location: Mexico City, Paris
    Collaboration between: Florian Sumi, Escougnou Cetraro gallery from Paris and Muebles Sullivan.
    Curator: Emanuela Ines Dunand
    Date: 2016

    Description: Installation of cotton sheets hand-painted with wine, measuring 3 meters by 1.5 meters, created and exhibited in Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California, Mexico, in 2016. The work explores themes of ritual, transience, and sensory memory through the organic interaction between textile and fermented pigment.

  • Garden of Oblivion

    Exposition name: Garden of Oblivion
    Type: Garden Intervention

  • 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

    Back to the Art Expositions List >>

  • 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.

  • PSYCHOTROPICAL COCKTAILS (PHARMAKON)

    Exposition name: PHARMAKON: PSYCHOTROPICAL COCKTAILS
    Location: Nina Menocal Gallery, Arafura’s Garden, IMSS Restaurant.
    In collaboration with: Chef Ramses Manek 
    Date: 2021 – 2022

    Description: The Psychotropical Cocktails project unfolded across several key venues in Mexico City throughout 2021, merging artistic experimentation with botanical rituals. At Arafura’s Garden in July, as part of a curatorial residency program, preparations began with cocktails and foods infused with psychotropical plants grown onsite. Later, in November, the project took form within the exhibition Nuevo Verdor at Nina Menocal Gallery, featuring signature drinks such as Cuba Libre (lulo and coca leaf with rum and soda), Blue Hummingbird – Huitzilopochtli (tequila with psilocybin mushrooms from San Isidro), and No Fear (pericón and mezcal with damiana and orange juice). Earlier in April, in collaboration with chef Ramses Manek, the experience also extended to a one-night event at IMSS Restaurant, where a curated menu of entheogenic recipes and psychotropical cocktails further explored the intersection of taste, plants, and expanded states of perception.

    Cocktails Menu:

    – Cuba libre: Lulo and coca leafs with Rum and soda.
    – Blue hummingbird Huitzilopochtli: Tequila and Psilocibe Mushrooms, San isidro .
    – No fear: Pericón and mezcal with damiana and orange juice.

  • PSYCHOTROPICAL DINNER BAR (PHARMAKON)

    Exposition name: PHARMAKON: PSYCHOTROPICAL DINNER BAR
    Location: Gallery on top of Bacal
    In collaboration with: Chef Giusseppe Lacorazza
    Date: Nov 2021

    Description: The residency happened at the gallery on top of Bacal, a restaurant where I was able to work in collaboration with the bar and kitchen. Having the psychotropic beverages cocktails at the menu of the bar during two months. And collaborating with Giuseppe Lacorraza, with whom we shared the design of the menu and preparation of 5 times dinner as a proper sense experience. The main purpose of this events is to make them as rituals, this dinner is special because we were aware of the use of the ingredients, all organics and many taken straight from the garden and recipes we prepared, but also for the plates, we used that were many of them glass sculptures, giving to the dinner a ritualistic and both celebratory spirit.

    Menu:

    – Pericon, yauhtli with cempasuche soup.
    – Pumpkin flowers quesadillas
    – Sierra in maguey leaves with hoja santa with melissa and smashed Malanga
    – Green salad with aromatic herbs, spirulina aztec alga, oregano orejon, amaranth, sage, verdolagas and lettuce, and season flowers, maravillas and mastuerzo.
    – San Isidro Mushrooms mousse with passion fruit sauce and mascarpone ice cream.

  • Vegetal sound machine translator – Terence Máquina 

    Exposition name: Vegetal sound machine translator – Terence Máquina
    Location: JUMEX Museum
    Collborators: Eduardo Vindiola  Sound design and instrumental production.
    Date: 2021

    Description: Cotton fabrics dyed in vapor with medicinal plants found in Izamal and Mérida  Dragon’s blood, achiote, chaya, ricino, muicle, achiote, bugamvilia, Jamaica, tronadora, tobacco, chicalote, damiana, tepezcohuite. Nine meters by seven meters by three meters.

    Related external articles:

    – Proyecto en Izamal, La tierra al revés. By Fundación Jumex
    https://www.fundacionjumex.org/es/exposiciones/242-proyecto-en-izamal-la-tierra-al-reves

  • 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