Momoxca Xochicalco:
La Casa de las Flores
Year:
2023-ongoing
Location(s):
Malacachtepec Momoxco/Milpa Alta, Mexico City, Mexico
Co-authors:
Calpulli Tecalco (María Angélica Palma Rodríguez & Héctor Celedón Muñiz)
In order to preserve plant-based ancestral knowledge, I was invited to collaborate with Calpulli Tecalco—an organization with over 25 years of experience working for the preservation of the cultural and natural patrimony of Indigenous cultures in San Pedro Atocpan, Malacachtepec Momoxco/Milpa Alta—on the creation and activation of a regional herbarium. As curator in residence, I worked with Calpulli Tecalco co-founder and co-director María Angélica Palma Rodríguez and biologist Héctor Celedón Muñiz to initiate the community herbarium. We then developed a program of events, workshops and artistic commissions in order for the herbarium to be activated in innovative ways by artists and educators.
How can we deploy the tools and structures of the herbarium in service of anticolonial pedagogy and the preservation of plant-based ancestral knowledge?
In July 2024, architect Octavio Castro Gallardo and I built a sculptural earthen oven on his mother’s land near Huaxpaltepec, in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Documentation of, and reflections upon, the building and activation of these various ovens, our field notes, and resources for building and cooking will be compiled in the forthcoming risograph publication Seven Ovens: Field Notes.
Resources::
Loremipsum
Collaborators:
Octavio Castro Gallardo, Perseida Tenorio, Maestra Adelita, Don Toño, Na’ Griselda & family, Katrina Santiago & mother; Queti Gallardo Macayo, Gustavo Castro de León, Marino and Materia Abierta.
Support:
The Canada Council for the Arts