Allegory of the River, the promise of the ceiba tree
Triptych, mixed media
Ceiba speciosa seed, river stone, b&w inkjet prints on cotton paper
51 x 36 x 7 cm each (framed)
2024
Historia Naturalis Brasiliae is a work of botanic literature published in Amsterdam in 1648. It is a treatise on botany, zoology, and indigenous plant medicine from a former Tarairiú-Otxukayana territory that now is part of the Republic of Brazil. Mcgrave's research was considered seminal for the development of scientific botany in the North of Europe, being the compilation a primal reference until the XIX century.
The treatise was written by the Dutch physician Willem Piso and the German naturalist George Mcgrave, it was commissioned by the Dutch West India Company while in search for gold and silver at the (renamed) San Francisco River, within the context of the war between the Netherlands and Portugal for control of silver mining.
The work uses as its starting point the publications' introductory illustration and the spatial distribution of characters and objects, in order to reveal the ideological and colonial conditioning of the image itself.
This connection is then crossed by the evocation of the riverbanks encapsulated both in a stone taken from the river and in a ceiba seed. The species of ceiba presented here in a seed form, grows in the territories traversed by the San Francisco River (Minas Gerais) and it is of crucial ecological importance in the region.
Ceiba speciosa seed, river stone, b&w inkjet prints on cotton paper
51 x 36 x 7 cm each (framed)
2024
Historia Naturalis Brasiliae is a work of botanic literature published in Amsterdam in 1648. It is a treatise on botany, zoology, and indigenous plant medicine from a former Tarairiú-Otxukayana territory that now is part of the Republic of Brazil. Mcgrave's research was considered seminal for the development of scientific botany in the North of Europe, being the compilation a primal reference until the XIX century.
The treatise was written by the Dutch physician Willem Piso and the German naturalist George Mcgrave, it was commissioned by the Dutch West India Company while in search for gold and silver at the (renamed) San Francisco River, within the context of the war between the Netherlands and Portugal for control of silver mining.
The work uses as its starting point the publications' introductory illustration and the spatial distribution of characters and objects, in order to reveal the ideological and colonial conditioning of the image itself.
This connection is then crossed by the evocation of the riverbanks encapsulated both in a stone taken from the river and in a ceiba seed. The species of ceiba presented here in a seed form, grows in the territories traversed by the San Francisco River (Minas Gerais) and it is of crucial ecological importance in the region.
