A new exhibit at City Hall features work by Sacramento artists exploring the roles plants play in cultural traditions, everyday life and personal memories.
Curated by the City’s Emerging Curator Fellow Lorena Rodríguez, “Plantas de Poder: Kinships, Knowledges & Reclamation” is on display at the Robert T. Matsui Gallery (915 I St.) through Dec. 15.
The exhibit features ceramics, printmaking, photography, woodwork and paintings created with natural pigments and inks derived from plants. The works explore seven plants: coca, cacao, tobacco, cannabis, angel’s trumpet (floripondio), tea and coffee.
Through the artwork, Rodríguez invites visitors to consider these plants beyond their commercial uses and learn about their cultural, spiritual and historical significance.
“These plants carry stories, memories, ancestral knowledge, and relationships that have survived generations of displacement, extraction, and criminalization,” Rodríguez said. “For me, this exhibition is about remembering that we are not separate from nature. We are part of these living relationships.”
The exhibit was inspired by “Siete Plantas: Historias de la Gente Sin Nombre” (“Seven Plants: Stories of the Nameless People”), a book compiling three years of research by seven women in Colombia, each studying a different plant. Rodríguez said reading the book and listening to its authors shaped her interest in exploring relationships between plants, cultural memory and ancestral knowledge.
The participating Sacramento-based artists are Jaime Lee Dempsey, Abayomi Brownfield, Esme Cabrera, Elizabeth Anne Bezark, Pablo Gomez and Rosalva Willow.
Rodríguez brought together emerging and established artists with different backgrounds, experiences and approaches to art. Each artist’s work reflects their relationship with plants and the natural world.
The exhibit is free to visit Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The gallery is wheelchair accessible.
About the Emerging Curators Fellowship
Administered by the City’s Office of Arts and Culture, the Emerging Curators Fellowship is a year-long program designed for the selected curator to curate and present two exhibitions with the guidance of a curatorial mentor.
The Emerging Curator Program supports new and developing curators through mentorship and opportunities to organize public exhibitions in City spaces. This year’s curatorial mentor is artist and curator Jazel Muñoz.
This year’s fellow, Lorena Rodriguez, is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural practitioner, and peace educator whose work explores the connections between creativity, collective memory, and social transformation.
Rodríguez’s earlier exhibit, “Liquid Memories: An Ode to the Waters of Sacramento,” featured artists exploring their connections to the region’s rivers, lakes and waterways.