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Mariana Castillo Deball in collaboration with Tatiana Falcón
Plant and Mineral Garden, 2021
Garden featuring plants and minerals mentioned in the Florentine Codex
Courtesy of the artist and Tatiana Falcón

In collaboration with Tatiana Falcón, Mariana Castillo Deball transforms one of the museum’s patios into a garden containing the raw materials used to create pigments and inks, as described in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex. These planters contain trees from different geographical regions, native annuals, bushes, insects, minerals and lichens, all of them used by the tlacuiloque, the wise Nahua scribes and painters. 

These plants and minerals are arranged according to the color they produce and following the orientation of the four directions of the earth found in Plate 1 of the Fejérváry-Mayer Codex. The original drawing represents the cardinal directions, as well as the tonalpohualli, the 260-day calendar system, with its cosmic cycles of 52 and 104 years. 

The count begins in the east, where the sun rises, and contains the elements that produce the color red: cochineal (Dactylopius coccus), an insect that lives on prickly-pears cacti (Opuntia spp.) and whose females produce the famous carmine dye; Mexican logwood (Haematoxylon brasiletto) from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, whose heartwood is used for dyeing; the achiote bush (Bixa orellana), which produces a light red tone; and an iron oxide mineral known as hematite.

The north contains the colors yellow and black. For the latter, mesquite is used, of the genus Prosopis, and by its side there are a variety of plants that are a source for yellows: three types of cempazuchil (The Mexican Marigold, Tagetes spp.), a parasitic plant known in Nahuatl as zacatlaxcalli (Cuscuta spp.) and quappachtli (Usnea spp.), a lichen from the cloud forests of Puebla’s Sierra Norte.

The west, white, is represented by two different species of amate: the white amate and the dark amate, used in the manufacture of paper for Mesoamerican codices. By their side, there is gesso, or calcium sulfate, which was used to prepare the base for painting on paper.

To the south, the color blue-green brings together Guatemalan indigo or anil (Indigofera suffruticosa), matlalli (Commelina coelestis) and muitle (The Mexican Honesuckle, Justicia spicigera). From the first, a dark blue dye can be extracted that was used to create a turquoise known as Mayan blue; the second creates a royal blue tone through the petals of its flowers; and the last produces a grayish blue with violet and purple tones.

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