THE MUTUALLY UNTRANSLATED HISTORIES OF BOTANICAL IGNORANCE

3.5 × 1.2 m · inkjet print mounted on styrofoam · 2021–ongoing. For full screen, click here.

This temporal diagram proposes a non-linear way of reading the biography of the fever tree (Cinchona sp.), exposing how it has been changed by imperial interests, and the linguistic dynamics that structure them.

Tapping a wide pool of national archives, books and specimens from various countriies and continents, this diagram consolidates a timeline that sets at odds two colonial versions of history, that tiptoe around the linguistic frontiers of Spanish, on one hand, English and Dutch on the other. Even though this might suggest a north/south division within the metropole, it also underlines the fact that these histories were possible only by the defacement and obscuring of original wisdoms from various indigenous communities in the Americas.