Pass i flora

This work is followed by a selection from “Bellas durmientes,” photographs shot in a hastily abandoned house in Córdoba, Colombia, an architectural space seized by untamed plant life as if by a guest who gradually, stealthily takes over.

It is followed by oil and acrylic works on canvas, graphite drawings, porcelain objects and embroideries that through delicate craftsmanship likewise recover the idea of transformation, mutation and renewal. In these works, Ana pays special attention to flower species like the rose, the orchid and the passion flower.

The “Pass i flora” series of ceramics and drawings is inspired by the titular flower and the genus of plants that Carl Linnaeus named passiflora in the 18th century, which comes from the Latin flos passionis, literally “flower of suffering” or “flower of the passion.”

Passiflora are also called mburucuyá, or maracuyá in Colombia. A climbing vine from the passiflora genus native to the warm regions of South America, its original, traditional name comes from various popular legends around the origin of the passion flower. One of them tells that Mburucuyá was a Spanish girl who had fallen in love with a Guaraní indigenous boy, meeting with him in secret. The father of the girl, a military man, had already decided that his daughter should marry a young Spanish captain. When he found out about his daughter’s relationship, he decided to murder the Guaraní boy. Mburucuyá, imprisoned by her pain, drove a feathered arrow into her heart, jutting from her chest like a flower, and she fell upon the body of her dead lover. Much later, they say, in that tragic place a plant blossomed that had never been seen before, named maracuyá.

“Pass i flora” evokes the cycle of pain and death that gives way to new forms of life and transformation.