haciendo y deshaciendo (doing and undoing)

Part of the Scent Fair 2025.

haciendo y deshaciendo / doing and undoing is an olfactory-based installation composed of knitted cocoons filled with various herbs from my plant medicine cabinet. Much like the process of metamorphosis for a butterfly, our human experience is a constant state of doing and undoing, or learning and unlearning, until we land on a version of ourselves that feels authentic. A frequency that vibrates just right. 

In my own metamorphosis, I continue to turn back to my ancestral botanical wisdom, or those teachings about the healing properties of plants that are passed down by generations of women as tools for survival. Sometimes, those teachings are lost in time due to circumstances like migration, trauma, distance. This becomes stagnant energy in our ancestral line, and I think about how my art practice might help release that energy, to preserve and pass on our family histories tied to the earth.

Inspired by the concept of “herbal allies” outlined in The Curanderx Toolkit: Reclaiming Ancestral Latinx Plant Medicine and Rituals for Healing by Atava Garcia Swiecicki, I invited visitors to breathe in each cocoon and contemplate which herbs they might be drawn to. Does a certain plant feel intoxicating or trigger a memory from childhood?

Visitors were then invited to take herb samples from an apothecary table to keep, to further research, to serve as a conduit to access the botanical wisdom of their own ancestors that has been lost in time.

Location: Future Front House, Austin, Texas