Tierra Baldía

Achiote and the management of endemic species are the means by which artist Carlos A. Mora addresses the increasing deforestation and loss of the Mayan biocultural heritage. The times of dispossession are spreading violently on a global scale, sweeping away nature, peoples and cultures by leaps and bounds. In order to accumulate as much capital as possible through the extraction of material resources, the Yucatan Peninsula has undergone major changes to its tropical forests in recent decades. Hence, the exhibition Tierra baldía is the result of an investigation and a body of work based on the millenary Mayan culture and the ecological destruction that forges its territory. The artist reads and approaches the landscape of the Yucatan Peninsula from the field of architecture. The artist reads and approaches the landscape of the Yucatan Peninsula from the field of architecture. In his work, this translates into the use of architectural plants from Mayan ceremonial centres located in that land. Mora decides to raise these plants with flax dyed with the seeds of Bixa orellana known as achiote. In ancient times, achiote played a significant symbolic role in Mayan sacrifices and rituals. Hence the artist draws a bridge between the blood that flowed during these ancestral ceremonies and the current problem of arson. Similarly, the artist weaves in the advance of deforestation by making use of cedar, one of the many tree species affected by real estate speculation, tourism and agribusiness in the region. The exhibition extends outwards with the installation Device I: Jasminum grandiflorum, a greenhouse structure that protects the jasmine species. The artist proposes a dual function for the device: the windows are arranged following the translation of the plant's scientific name into binary code, in order to contain and reveal biological information about the plant in the future. But the work also poses a contradiction, in which the act of conserving nature is achieved by safeguarding it. Similar to the policies of protectionism and preservation of our ecologies. As a whole, Tierra baldía not only revives the discussions and contradictions brought about by the devastation and loss of living heritage, but also proposes ways of making dedicated to the land itself, its history, materials and tradition. It is a story about a territory between memory and ashes. – Rosela del Bosque