WITH SO MANY WORKS taking the body as the basis of their aesthetic discourse, it comes as a relief to find an artist who reflects on other living materials. Federico Guzmán deals with plants as organic beings on which humankind has left a considerable imprint. In doing so, he works to dismantle aspects of the Western idea of the Americas, constructed in part through European botanical expeditions of past centuries. The graphic representation of American flora was born of an error: the idea of exploration, that is, the discovery of “new” species (ones unknown to Europe).

Guzmán attempts to represent