in:between - spaces for science communication

Victoria Martínez (Fine Arts)
Prints in Risograph/Serigraphy Series of 3

In the 16th century, many European botanists travelled to South America to find “new” species of plants and flowers, giving rise to taxonomic categories that were named after them. In many cases, this disregarded the fact that species of flowers, plants and animals, had already been given a name by native people, a name that many times echoed a myth or revolved around the faculties of the plant rather than a European male surname. The process of migrating plants and animals to other hemispheres had consequences for both the original place where they came from as for their “new” destiny, affecting the cycles of reproduction (axolotl) or turning into an uncontrolled plague (Opuntia Cactus).
In the course of Science Communication 2021, the Brazilian scientist Tai Linares gathered data sets of several species of flowers and plants in South America that bare this history, which sparked my intention to trace that lineage in Mexican botanics. In this project, my intention is to track the scientific information and the poetic elements that compose the history of 3 species; the cactus, a mushroom and an axolotl. Hence, by juxtaposing scientific facts with native knowledge by means of poetry, another storyline can be traced to talk about living beings that integrates a multidirectional memory. An exercise in tracing down the entanglement of botanics with European colonial history, whilst recovering the native names and proposing new methods for naming natural agents, thus regenerating the roots of a local relation to nature.
The three prints are done with risograph and screen print techniques in A3 format.
vicamez.net / @vicamezz