The Sacred Plants of the Navajo Indians, 2009 – Parco Nord, Milan
Artist’s garden cultivated with beans, maize, pumpkin, diameter cm 500
“The work is inspired by the ancient traditions and symbolism of the pre-Columbian American peoples, specifically the Navajo tribe. Her minimalist installation, linked to the primordial and symbolic form of the circle – whose references are to the unlimited, the absolute and the infinite – accommodates in four equal sectors the four sacred plants of the Indian tradition: the bean, the corn, the pumpkin (linked to food) and tobacco (used for rituals and sacred ceremonies) which, according to millenary rituals, were cultivated with respect and veneration.
Arranged according to ancient uses, the plants bear witness to distant peoples and cultures, to the proud inhabitants of the new world that was conquered by force and with countless sacrifices and abuses suffered by the natives. Looking at the vegetable garden and some of its products that are so taken for granted today, becomes a means for the artist to make us reflect on history, culture, and the profound respect of peoples, nature and its balances”. Matteo Galbiati, 2009 (on the occasion of the project “A-Ortista, dalla semina al raccolto – from Sowing to Harvest” realized at the Parco Nord, Milan, in view of Expo 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”)