The Book of Nature

Fossil Bay is located on the Santa Cruz River in Argentina. A few years ago, an agreement was signed with China to build two mega-dams on this glacial river, despite the enormous environmental impact they would cause. Fossil Bay is an inhospitable and little-studied site, but of great scientific importance due to the amount of fossilized bone remains it contains, which will be submerged in one of the bodies of water of the second dam.

Embalmed zebra head. Objects seized from illegal animal trafficking are kept in the basement of Fauna Nación Argentina.

A woman holds a papion cub in her hands.

The Martin scale is an eye color chart developed by the influential anthropologist Rudolf Martin and used by scientists and researchers in anthropological classifications. This chart is on display at the Museo de La Plata in Argentina.

A box with embalmed birds in the basement of Fauna Nación Argentina. All the dead and embalmed animals that have been stolen as a result of species trafficking since the last century are stacked in this room.

In the last century, the rhea, a flightless bird, almost became extinct in Argentina due to hunting for feathers.

Seized jaguar skin by Fauna Nación Argentina.

On a leaf from Genesis, the drawing of a Pira-ñu, a fish with a horse’s head. An animal recognized by the Guaraní that attacks the boats and hunts the crew.

Mexican stilts in a parking lot in Dallas. It is native to the Gulf of Mexico, but has spread as far as Oregon. It is a bird with a great ability to adapt to human environments, so much so that its population continues to increase. In some places, it is considered an invasive species.

A macaw doll used to feed the macaw cubs that are being raised in human isolation in the Buenos Aires Ecoparque with the goal of reinserting them into the Ibera wetlands.

These objects are part of a big collection of craniometery from the La Plata Museum. This was one of the most important museums in Latin America in early SXX where amongst dinosaur exhibitions European anthropologists would come and investigate Argentine indigenous communities. In the last years people are working in returning thousands of humans remains that are kept to their original communities.

A tequila-flavored artificial lollipop with the worm inside.

Frozen mountains in an unsuspecting environment.

A Styrofoam stuffing of a cougar for embalming invaded by Fauna Nación Argentina.

Natalia is one of the eighty felines from the Lujan Zoo in Argentina, where the director believes that wild animals can become domesticated. Natalia walks through his house with absolute freedom.

When we realize that human beings are not part of nature but are nature, neither separate from it nor superior to it, our perception of the world can begin to change radically.

“Nature” as we know it is a construct, a social paradigm of romantic and modernist ideals that has nothing to do with the ecosystem. They are human desires, fears and fantasies that we classify and fragment as something alien and we do not want to be part of.

This project investigates how we look at what we call nature and how this idea influences our relationship with ecosystems and our perception of human beings today.

A project of chaos as the very word that defines nothing, and houses everything. The Book of Nature challenges our denials and prejudices and forces us to confront our relationship with the world of which we are a part.