Soil and Seeds Containers

Soil and Seeds Containers

Oaxaca, Mexico, 2015

«Where there is earth there is a hive… where there is a hive there is fertility. » (Trocortesian Codex, Mayan Culture).

The metallic canisters that seem like urns, keep a colored soil collection of different places of the Sierra Mixteca in the state of Oaxaca.

The single soil recollection, conducted by bio-constructor and architect Maribel González Apodaca describes the first lines of the narrative, where the recognition of the place and a recount of diverse processes and building techniques of houses, silos and sowing terrace are made.

The flowers with seed come from different regions of the state of Oaxaca. Plants of medicinal use that are also providers of nectar, pollen, oils and resins for pollinators like the Mexican native bees. The flower selection was made under the naturopath guidance of Dana Kraft and the medicinal plant expert Dora María Cuevas.

The third shelf of the containers is occupied by different wax sculptures where you can find remains of organic vegetal and bee material. These pieces, like sculpturesque compost, recreate the meaning that the Mayans found in the fact of burying dead bees to regenerate the earth, to regenerate fertility and life. The wax is from melliferous bees (European) from the Calakmul zone of Quinta Roo and from stingless bees (Tribe: Meliponini) from the North Mountain Range of Puebla.

By including the hive products of different bee species a sense of inclusion and transculturation is expressed, that extends my main objective as creator –to develop artistic strategies that work as echelons or hinges that link the activity of a variety of knowledge fields around the basic axis: education, environment and community.

PICTURES by Eva Lépiz