Daniel Neman
Though they are small, every seed contains everything a plant needs to grow and thrive. When planted in the ground, it can someday grow into a blade of grass, a stalk of wheat or a mighty oak tree.
In a very real sense, a seed represents the future.
That concept is at the core of a new exhibit opening Feb. 21 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University.
"Seeds: Containers of a World to Come" features the work of 10 artists from around the globe, says exhibit co-curator Meredith Malone. Each work looks at the relationship between plants, humans and land.
Co-curator Svea Braeunert says the exhibit shows how seeds can be a model for people to follow to find our way out of an impending environmental crisis. And because they are the means plant species use to travel from one place to another and literally take root in new lands, they are also a reflection of human migration, she says.
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Beatriz Cortez, one of the artists represented in the exhibit, knows about migration; she frequently references the subject in her work. A native of El Salvador, she spent much of her childhood watching her country torn apart in a civil war. Things became so bad in 1989, when she was 18, her parents told her to pack what she could in two hours and flee to the United States.
Her piece in the exhibit, "Chultún El Semillero" is about migration, of a sort. It honors the ancient Maya people who lived in Central America, their culture and traditions. It pays tribute to a people who are no longer there and highlights the notion that the seeds they cultivated then grow crops we still eat today.
"The seeds are a gift of generosity that they sent to us, the humans of the future," she says.
The future and the past combine to form one-half of her piece's two-part structure. This portion is made of hammered and welded steel, and resembles a squat spaceship, an impression that is entirely intentional. Spaceships can be used to travel through time, connecting the Maya past to the present and the future, she says.
Small containers of seeds are placed on trays around the structure -- which also resembles a seed pod. The seeds are all for crops cultivated by the Maya, including amaranth, beans, sorghum, gourds and several types of corn. The spaceship is preserving them and transporting them to the future, she says.
But this first part of the piece also resembles a chultún, a cistern that the Maya would dig into the limestone in front of their houses. These cisterns primarily held water, but different compartments could also hold the bones of ancestors or sacred items, Cortez says.
A tunnel connects the cistern/seed pod/spaceship part of the work to the other part, and the tunnel itself is noteworthy. It is a wispy metal lattice suggesting electricity or energy or tendrils or branches, she says.
The remaining portion of the piece is about the same size as the spaceship, but more open. It is a functioning garden, containing shelves on which Central American plants are growing. Symbolically guarding the other plants is a recently planted ceiba tree, which the Maya considered a portal to both the underworld and the heavens.
"I couldn't tell you if the garden is feeding the space capsule or the space capsule is feeding the garden. I can't tell," Cortez says.
Along with her work involving seeds and Mayan traditions, Cortez has also been interested in depicting the staying power of lost objects and people, things that are no longer around but are still remembered fondly by those that appreciated them.
"When you have a family that is divided by migration, they are not there but they are always there," she says.
Last month, her art collided with her life when the deadly Los Angeles fires burned the apartment where she was living. She lost everything, including everything she had brought with her from El Salvador.
But the arts community soon came together to help its own. Within a day or two, she began to receive calls from people offering a place to stay for a day or two or a week or two. She now calls Los Angeles the warmest, most generous place in the world.
"I don't have a home, but I have lots of homes," she says.
If you go
What: Seeds: Containers of a World to Come
When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays-Sundays Feb. 21-July 28
Where: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 1 Brookings Drive, Washington University
How much: Free
More info: kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu
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