The Poetics of Transplantation
The Asturias region of northern Spain is one of the earliest and most enduring corn micro-cultures in Europe. Corn was brought to Asturias from the Americas more than 500 years ago; first as an agro-experiment entwined with the tragic legacy of Spanish colonization, and eventually as a means of providing “cheap” calories to this remote mountain populace.
What is preserved and what is lost in the transatlantic journey for both corn, and the Central and South American peoples who have recently come to craft lives in Asturias? What processes (agricultural, culinary) beliefs (ontological, political), structures (genetic, familial) are preserved—or not? And how does this journey, geographically and temporally, remake both people and plant?
This project aims to think through transplantation as a poetics that crosses between the human and the botanical, as a vehicle for a deep and visceral understanding of what transforms when something, or someone, is uprooted and moved across continents.