SE ENCUENTRAN, SE ACOMPAÑAN / THEY FIND EACH OTHER, THEY ACCOMPANY EACH OTHER.

2022

Museo Universitario del Chopo UNAM

Mexico City

Text by Daiset Sarquis

The wild, that which by definition is born and reproduces not thanks to (in spite of) human intervention, free from domestication; evokes resistance. Contrary to the civilizing project of humans, it survives in spite of the domination and devastation, it’s born, it grows and dies organically and haphazardly, but while the project of human progress advances, botanical analyses point to the fact that wild plants, since 1970, have been reduced in more than 50% of what they once were; an announcement that the wild is in fact, dying.

The piece THEY FIND EACH OTHER, THEY ACCOMPANY EACH OTHER by Fana Adjani shows us a living landscape, a planet which turns, breathes, and hosts a horizon of plants that are endemic to Mexico, on the verge of extinction; we are witnesses to a Mexico that could disappear. In collaboration with the Botanical Gardens of the Biology Institute of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), the artist conceived a moment of encounter between the attendants and a variety of plants, among them: crassulaceae, echeveria gibbiflora, basellaceae, anrederas ramosas, agaves inaequidens and victoriae reginae. The piece only occurs when the visitors decide to take a plant with them, thus beginning their journey together.

THEY FIND EACH OTHER… warns us that the extinction of diversity and of life is only avoidable in the encounter and care, when we become conscious that there is an inescapable interdependence between humans and plants. By taking a plant, I manifest a desire to live together, a desire to learn to accompany each other.

The wild is at stake in the project of the future, therefore, its permanence is now a political necessity in order to redefine the meaning of life, the living, and our way of living.

The piece holds within it extinction itself, it perishes as the days go by and the great container which is a breathing, moving earth, is progressively stripped of life. But in the words of the artist herself dispossession does not always mean loss and it does not always carry with it a painful path. In THEY FIND EACH OTHER…, the vacuum following dispossession represents the many encounters and the contradictory beginning of a life of companionship between the wild and the human.

Fana Adjani on the installation:

“This piece is a poetic action in which the “Earth”, represented in a rotating object construction, is a symbol of our own independent body, and it maintains a pulsating movement in our own internal red rivers; a provider of life which disassembles the dispossession and pain to rebuild continuously.

In this interconnected web which is interrelated to plural existences, in this network of life, in a daily (and almost imperceptible) fashion, lie the plants in an apparent silence, these sensitive bodies which with their memory also sustain us, and grant us their transformative gaze.

This symbolic act-installation invites the attendants to adopt a native plant to care for (and be cared for as well), to reflect upon the self in one another, and walk through time collectively.”

“Se Encuentran, Se Acompañan.” de Fana Adjani

©2022 Fana Adjani

Curator: Mtro. Gabriel Yépez

Producer: Pere George.

Text: Daiset Sarquis.

Biology Institute of UNAM

Plants donated by:

SECTEI

Botanical Gardens of the Biology Institute of UNAM

Constructors: Jair Almar y Enrique Flores, Ctxt Lab.

Assistant to Fana Adjani: Avit Malibrán.

Special guest performance by: Luisa Almaguer, songs written by Liliana Felipe

Official sponsors:

Museo Universitario del Chopo

Cátedra Nelson Mandela

Instituto de Biología UNAM

Jardín Botánico de la UNAM

SECTEI

Patola Creative Studio

La Otilia Gluten Free Bakery

Música del video: Fragmento de “TIERRA” (Versión cortometraje) por Simón Mejía

Special thanks to: Dr. Salvador Arias, Mtra. Carmen Cecilia Hernandez Zacarias, Biologa Ivonne Olalde, Max Cetto Bojórquez, Antonio Oaxaca, Wacha.