Reimagining Death (In The Greenhouse) [2022]
Reimagining Death (In The Greenhouse) [2022] is a multimedia installation by ITZATNA that seeks to recognize the intrinsic relationship between life, death, soil, and humanity.
“When you think about death in the UK, you think that it is ‘The End’. In Mexico, we believe that death is an elevation to another level of existence. Because of this, Mexicans celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) as a national event of a personal and familial observation, and respect to those who have already gone on the voyage but who return to us every year in a festival of welcome. The souls of the dead return each year to enjoy for a few days the pleasures they once knew in this life. These worlds of the living and the dead exist in a state of permanent interaction.”
In 2022, ITZATNA created ‘Garden Itzatna’ - a communal artist-activist garden in Moseley, Birmingham. As artists and neighbours, we began to collectively reimagine how diaspora black, brown, and indigenous peoples living in the UK can access shared land and soil, and raise the question of how (and what) we might grow together, for each other, to survive and thrive during these times of continuing crisis. The video work inside the greenhouse explores a year in reflection of these humble germinations and quiet activations of our sheltered back garden. If you’d like to see and get involved in Garden Itzatna in 2023, please get in touch: contact@itzatna.org