Embodied Resistance

Link to Essay: First Movement, Spiral Time and Transformation

Everything started with an encounter that happened some years ago visiting the San Francisco Botanical Garden and I saw for the first time in my life a foye tree. I lived most of my life in Chile and I had never seen a foye until that visit to a botanical garden six thousand miles north from my homeland. This encounter left a deep impression and triggered a line of questioning about roots, trade, indigeneity, colonial networks, knowledge, and my process of identity formation.

While researching the tree, I came across an illustration of an historical engraving from the 17th century and I was struck by the gesture of a boquifoye holding a branch of foye in what was a political encounter, the first treaty between Mapuche and Spaniards.