Variaciones de la memoria vegetal

Plantas que materializan historias

Abstract

The vegetable has always been a central theme for art. Whether as landscape or still life, or formally operating through the modernist incorporation of organic structures in the plastic and architectural compositions, the vegetable body seems to insist as theme or motive of the imagination. However, in this insistence, something of the vegetable bodies seems to be unthinkable as such. In this article we will point out the aspects of the plant arise in some contemporary works of art linked to memory (especially linked to genocides of State), given that they might allow the access to a realm in which  -beyond  the visible forms or the organic logic that the plants would make proliferate- the vegetable becomes "storied matter”. Taking up the name of materialist eco-criticism in this way, we are interested in showing to what extent plant bodies stop working as a screen in which "representation" occurs. Rather, as we argue, plant bodies tell stories that radically displace the anthropocentralized point of view of expression, while also indicating the blind spot of human-made memories of horror.