This counter-mapping project starts on the point of rupture and looks out across the cityscape toward the last point of free-moving surface. In documenting the altered landscape by surveying the plants growing within the sightline from the sinkhole to the historic path of free-flowing waters both the casket wreath and the botanical cartogram give visual and material form to the dislocated landscape of the Mexico Basin.
The Rio Consulado Avenue and the entombed body of the Consulado River,
Renamed Collector 15.
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Homage to a Dismembered Landscape
Casket Wreath, Mexico City
news footage, site-specific performance art
5 minutes 21 seconds
2024
The forced desiccation of the Mexico Basin created an altered landscape assemblage capable of growing cactus in soil historically part of a lagoon.
Walking the distance from the entombed river to the sinkhole site, I collected plant cuttings and pulled them together into a wreath to lay at the site of rupture. This wreath served both to acknowledge the plants that now make up the living body of the landscape assemblage and to memorialize the desiccated body of the former lagoon bed.
Homage to a Dismembered Landscape
Casket Wreath, Mexico City
- news footage, site-specific performance art
- 5 minutes 21 seconds
2024
Botanical Cartogram: Mapping Disruption in the Mexico Basin
Mixed media installation with collected plant samples
watercolor and water-soluble graphite
Using collected plant samples to visually differentiate the Mexico Basin's natural state from its current, artificially desiccated condition, this cartogram includes cuttings from exotic, invasive, and distressed native species, like water-loving cottonwood trees and dry-soil lavender bushes. This counter-mapping builds a visual language from displaced plants and provides a figurative shape to the immense scale of dislocation inflicted upon the landscape assemblage over time.
After centuries of work to hide water and remove it from the land, Mexico City faces a major water crisis.
The artificial and prolonged separation of water from the soil created dismembered landscapes with a consistently altered state of interaction between animate and inanimate elements of the ecosystem—including the substrate, botanical life, more-than-human beings, and human beings.
The historical act of removing the water is recognized by the Director for Water Systems as only “half the battle,” as the now-desiccated lacustrine clay causes chronic instability, including sinkholes and severe flooding. The long-term infrastructure projects implemented to drain the lagoon ultimately injured the land’s natural hydrological balance, creating unsustainable and unsafe urban environments. The other half of the battle is the threat of water scarcity, where droughts and heat in the city’s water source regions are intensified by the historical damage, leading to future conflicts over clean water access.