Cardón cardinal (Cardinal Cardon [A Lilli Hartmann Watercolour Woven by Jorge Damián and José Flores in Guadalajara, Mexico])

Patricia Esquivias works from non-academic investigations into a period in history that has gone unnoticed and the connection that can be made between this time and the present. Her project entitled Cardón cardinal (Cardinal Cardon, 2019) specifies the relationship between extractivism and Expo ‘92 from a case study: the displacement of a giant cactus, a seventeen-metre high, eighteen-tonne Pachycereus pringlei from the Baja California desert to the garden of the Mexican Pavilion for Expo ‘92. After the conclusion of the event, the cactus was transferred to Seville City Council and today survives next to the ruins of what was once the pavilion.
The tapestry, meanwhile, reproduces a watercolour made by Lilli Hartmann from Esquivias’s account of the cardinal cardon investigation and was hand-woven in a workshop the artist encountered on one of her trips to Mexico. It denotes a speculative representation of the experiences built up by the plant. On one side, the cardon is seen in San Felipe, Baja California, and on the opposite side in Seville, with the drawing recovering the work of those draughtswomen and draughtsmen who would paint, via symbols, the stories of villages. The choice of the tapestry retrieves the technique, resources and thinking of the weavers for the purposes of transferring to image sensitive experiences and other aspects of the immaterial world, such as feelings and emotions.

Cristina Cámara Bello