Victoria Martínez

The botanical shift

In the 16th century, many European botanists traveled 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. By this, the original name and its meaning were silenced, therefore influencing the course of history. This 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 2021, the Brazilian computer scientist Tai Linares gathered large data sets of several species of flowers and plants in South America that bear this history. With this project, I want to track the scientific information and the poetic elements that compose the history of 3 species in Mexican botany; the cactus, a mushroom and an axolotl. As long as the histories and myths behind the plants are remembered, there is still a possibility to reclaim back the local cultures around them. 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.

Prints in Risograph/Serigraphy, 2021-2023