MILPA + X, 18', 2022
“MILPA + X” is a video installation about indigenous queer ecology. It takes its title from the Milpa, a millennial sustainable way of cultivating the land in Abya Yala (Mesoamerica) consisting of 12 crops instead of one. But the concept of Milpa can also be understood as a way of thinking with plurality, solidarity and diversity; of crops, gender, sexuality and more. The video starts with a young Mayan girl reciting a poem that summarizes 500 years of colonial history in Guatemala, setting a historical backdrop whereby nationhood deserves no celebration and colonization never ended. Afterwards “the land” tells “the water” of a dream-nightmare about a Swiss mining company that extracts and leaks nickel in lake Izabal in El Estor; followed by a conversation between the artist and a Mayan anthropologist about the sciences of indigenous women in spaces of resistance; and ending with a rap song delivered by nature itself about flowers that grow out of lava as a metaphor for indigenous people and their ways of life. The sculptures are a representation of indigenous people who come from under the earth like magma with all our complexities.
Commissioned by Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
