ANADENANTHERA PROJECT

A sacred seed of millenary use in the South Andes, summons us in this installation. Embodied within it, certain alkaloid substances awaken ecstatic experiences upon consumption.

This seed was, and continues to be, an element of the Andean ritual spaces. Native to the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountain range, it spread through exchanges across the Atacama Desert. As discovered through archaeological research, fine carved wooden tablets were crafted for its consumption. Despite the suppression of these practices in colonial times, today this seed circulates again, in ritual contexts such as the pagos currently offered to the divinities as an act of reciprocity.

Multiple stories, visions, drawings, and sounds unfold from this research. They converge in a rhizomatic experience -random and free of hierarchies- where the life contexts of these items are narrated. We seek to awaken subjective experiences from languages that, besides challenging our rationality, beckon us to learn through the senses.