Invisible Seeds - for NaturArchy catalogue

Installation view Invisible Seeds — Installation view of *Invisible Seeds*

Invisible Seeds presents an embroidered and painted textile by the Shipibo-Conibo artists’ community. Produced mostly by women, Shipibo art represents an entire system of communication with plants and plant life. The work focuses on the complex systems of planting, harvesting, and treating agricultural products that sustain life in the Amazon. Thus addressing the relationships between territory, human beings, non-human forms, and the spiritual worlds.

The project served to develop a model of dialogue and co-responsibility in the decision-making processes between the artists involved and the Shipibo-Conibo artists in the Amazon, and a biodiversity expert from the Joint Research Centre. The piece proposes the recognition of indigenous contributions to the sustainability of food systems. It accompanies the struggles of the Shipibo people who claim the preservation and respect of their ancestral knowledge. They demand urgent actions to prevent the destruction of the Amazon and better living conditions for indigenous peoples in Peru and everywhere.

Natural pigments, acrylic paint, thread embroidery on tocuyo fabric, 320 x 260 cm

Gala Berger & Metsá Rama (Pilar Arce) | Irene Guerrero Fernández

In collaboration with: Nélida Mahua, Lourdes Mahua, Lucy Silvano, Yoxan Ana and Zaida Silvano

Interview with Metsa Rama: https://insiteart.org/multimedia/common-thread-metsa-rama-interview

Residency Project: https://science-art-society.ec.europa.eu/invisible-seeds

Presentation of Residency @ JRC: https://science-art-society.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/video-thumbnails/2023-06/invisible%20seeds%20-%20Large%20540p.mp4

Gala Berger

Gala Berger is a visual artist and independent curator, currently living in Lima, Perú. Berger‘s work is rooted in Latin America, and for the development of her projects she builds independent spaces. Co-founder of Casa MA [2018-2022] a community commit- ted to the dissemination of creative practices generated by diverse identities in the territory of Costa Rica, Central America and its diaspora. Berger has also worked extensively in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she is co-founder of La Ene (New Energy Museum of Contemporary Art 2010- 2020) experimental museum, and co-founder of the Paraguay Printed Art Fair. Also between 2012 and 2014, she directed two exhibition spaces: Inmigrante [Immigrant] and Urgente [Urgent]. She has held individual and collective exhibitions in Santo Domingo, São Paulo, Lima, Los Ange- les, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Querétaro, Sorocaba, Medellín, Montreal, Tampere, Río de Janeiro, San Juan, among others.

Website

Instagram: @galen_gb

Metsà Rama (Pilar Arce)

Pilar Rossany Arce Mahua (Metsa Rama) was born in the Paoyhan community, Loreto department, Ucayali province, Padre Márquez district - where the Invisible Seeds project has been developed. She currently lives in the Shipibo-Konibo Community of Cantagallo in Lima. She studied international relations and Bilingual Intercultural Education. She is a Shipibo artist, educator and translator who is dedicated to teaching, disseminating and enhancing the artistic expressions of the Shipibo-Konibo people. Watch an interview with Metsa Rama.

Irene Guerrero Fernandez

I am a Spanish PhD Ecologist with focus on Farmland Biodiversity. My research career has developed on the interaction of human activity and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. This relation is central, as the functioning of agro-ecosystems, their capacity to provide, depends very much on their ecological integrity. As crucial to communities, this interaction between food production and nature is very much shaped by policy. Thus, inevitably I have become increasingly involved in supporting policy-making. I have worked most of my time in Academia, teaching ecology and plant biology in university programmes of agricultural science. Yet, my path towards agricultural policy has led me to my current position as a project officer in the D5 unit of the JRC here in Ispra.