Humo, Semilla, Raíz
When Isadora Romero found out that her great-grandmother and grandfather were seed guardians, she wondered if the need to tell stories about agrobiodiversity was in her blood. Over the 20th century, 75% of seed varieties have been lost worldwide, both within and amongst different species. This has been hastened by the push for monoculture and substitution of native varieties with their high yielding counterparts. Romero’s visual research engages with the cultural, political and social aspects of this phenomenon. It looks at how the loss of ancestral memory and Indigenous knowledge—resulting from colonization, forced displacement, and racism—is causing seeds to disappear at an alarming rate.
Moving across multiple geographies in Latin America, Romero examines this crisis with breadth and precision. Her research is informed by local communities who help her identify and interpret the issues specific to their environment. In Paraguay, she observes how women collectivize to counter agribusiness that limits produce for local consumption, and the inequitable land distribution that such businesses benefit from. In Mexico, she looks at the historical and cultural significance of food and how the preservation of domesticated plants can be shaped by their multigenerational relationship to the human species. In Ecuador, she attempts to understand the dual approaches towards conservation—the Indigenous and the conventionally scientific. Acknowledging the investment of both groups in similar goals—the preservation of native seed varieties—her work is an effort to bring them in dialogue. Finally, her own family’s history in Colombia, and their contribution to the preservation of the potato seed, becomes the catalyst and culmination of the ethos of the project.
The chapters in this exhibition, traversing through her journey across four countries, offer an alternate way of looking at environmental issues—through the prism of possibility, instead of catastrophic consequence. Each one privileges a resistance: of women organising against monoculture or communities for whom inherited knowledge systems are guiding forces. In looking towards the past, and to those that continue to relate to land, Fume, Root, Seed recalibrates the approach we adopt towards conversations around conservation.
Tanvi Mishra
Curator