‘A garden of ours’, an interactive exhibition at the Cocoa Museum that runs until April 17

From March 10 to April 17, the halls of the Cocoa Museum in Guayaquil have flourished with various gardens cultivated by 16 Ecuadorian artistswith the curator Paulina León, coordinator of Contemporary Art, a space of the Department of Anthropology, History and Humanities of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso).

Defined as a site that opens, sows, cultivates and cares for worlds, a garden of ours previously stayed at the Museo de los Metales de Cuenca, in December 2021. León explains that the current edition, in Guayaquil, has been possible in co-production with the Museo del Cacao.

During the pandemic, the curator observes, contact with plants was recovered, and many people dedicated more time to their domestic plants and flowers, to creating gardens, to planting orchards. Something similar happened to artists. They began to work more closely with these companions in confinement.

a garden of ours invites to leave the paradigm that the human being is the center of everything and that all things and beings are at our service. “Many of the artists are questioning this relationship,” says León. “And they are thinking of a more horizontal relationship, in the creation of human communities with other living beings”, in more respectful connections, in a world in which we all take care of each other.

There is something arrogant in anthropocentric thinking, considers the curator, and as an example she gives fungi, which are not animals or plants, but existed before human beings and their longevity far exceeds ours. They form underground networks that connect trees and help them share nutrients and resources with each other, in a form of cooperation called Wood Wide Web or the ‘wooden internet’.

Along the same lines, the artist Miranda Texidor presents a collection of plant portraits, which are not reproductions of botanical exactness, but rather highly subjective pieces, and reflects on how to establish a relationship with plants that is not one of mere consumption, but rather the contemplative benefit of being in contact with them. Thus he got to the point of making the self-portrait of himself as a plant, Sambo flower.

Near this exhibition is heal the bodywork of the Quito Polett Zapatathe youngest artist in this exhibition (27), who brings her degree work from the Faculty of Arts of the Central University of Ecuador, started in 2019. It covers the world of medicinal plants, in an investigation that led her to speak with the practitioners of this ancestral trade in the markets of Quito. From there she came up with this series of watercolors, made with a mixture of organic and industrial pigments, but also with the technique of embroidery, something she learned during confinement, in a virtual workshop.

Activations open to the public, from this Thursday

a garden of ours It goes hand in hand with a series of activations led by the artists and guests. The next one is this Thursday, March 24. The artist Andrea Alexander Freire will receive visitors with the continuous talk ‘What is healing?’, from 08:00 to 17:00. And at 19:00, in the cafeteria The Blind Mulea gathering will be held with her and with Victoria Vaccaro about the book gynecological tree.

This is followed by a talk, on Thursday March 31 at 18:00, entitled ‘Conversing with the plant world’ and continues with the artistic dinner sambo flowerconducted by the artist Miranda Texidor (pseudonym of Ana Fernández) and guests, in collaboration with the Guayaquil coffee shop La Suculenta.

On Saturday, April 2, is the opportunity to attend a tour of the entire exhibition, with the mediation of the curator Paulina León (4:00 p.m.). And at 5:30 p.m. there is a recital of plants, as they will be connected to sensors that will emit sounds. This activity is based on the concept of the artist’s work Munoz Day.

Finally, on Wednesday, April 13, the conceptual tasting will take place at the museum Sensoriumin charge of Martina Miño Perez.

Opening hours at the museum are from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 17:00, in Panama and Imbabura. More information at programacion@museocacao.com. (AND)