Indigenous knowledge is another anchor in several exhibitions of the PST Art program, and one that has a deep relevance in Southern California. Sangre de Nopal at the Fowler Museum, a collaboration between textile artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez, traces the origins of cochineal, a red dye developed by Zapotec scientists from an insect that lives on cacti. “Los Angeles is home to the largest Oaxacan community outside of Mexico, and we are also home to the borderless cochineal, which thrives on the opuntia cactus all over the American West,” Aguiñiga told Hyperallergic. Full article here.

Each of the commissioned installations involved some degree of collaboration between the garden’s scientists and volunteers and the artists interpreted the theme in different ways, using a variety of aesthetic strategies to encourage viewers to reconsider their relationship to the prairie ecosystems and plants of the Midwest. Luftwerk’s installation “A Summer Journey” does so through fragments of plant material and a recovery of the spectrum of color that exists in nature, one which we can’t always see. Full review here.

The wisdom and beauty of Indigenous Oaxacan culture is on view through the work of contemporary textile artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez, done in collaboration with Gutiérrez’s family in Teotitlán del Valle and Indigenous Mixteca immigrant women farmworkers. The Fowler’s exhibition features large-scale work from both artists alongside historical objects from the museum’s collections. Full guide here.