Mutant Roses


Calendario Club de Plantas
2024
2024’s mutant roses calendar theme (we have published and released a free calendar every year since 2020 with my book club[1]) was inspired by the project Boundary Plants by artist Sara Black. In this project, the artist illustrates a series of flowers and fruits (following the tradition of Western botanical illustration) that have mutated in their form due to anthropogenic effects, that is, because of human action (pollution, contamination, or radiation).

Through her illustrations, the artist wonders how can these mutant flowers enter the traditional plant canon, how tradition can accommodate mutations, and reflects on the consequences of capitalism in the living.

Roses are one of the flowers that have the most varied changes in their shapes, colors, and cycles due to their high demand and the business that involves them. The original scanned images from a vintage rose book were worked in photoshop to subtlety. become mutants.
These mutations are not apparent at first glance but play with petal quantity, color, and shape.

This is the text written for the 2024 calendar by Eliana Hernández y Lucia Caleta

ser muchas cosas y ser nada, ser rosa
ser rosa como ser oculta
como ser secreto
en la rosa un secreto
una mutación que acelera

una mutación: la oscuridad de la rosa
rosas mutadas como rosas esclavas
como rosas feroces

una forma nueva en la rosa
que es mensaje y radiación:

la era de las rosas mutantes
forzadas al cambio
romances delirios
cyborgs rosas

la era del error:
una pregunta por el pétalo,   
la adaptación y la espina

de las rosas aprendemos
al calor de la polinización
a cooperar con otres
fundirnos en la fuente escaramujo
universal

un año del fuego al viento
de un soñar otro
¿mutar el deseo?, ¿mutar el sueño?
como la rosa atrae hacia sí la fantasía
imaginar nuevos métodos  
estrategias mutantes
cósmica armonía

pan y rosas

[1] Club de Plantas: Mabel Carmona, Gisela Santucci, Lucia Caleta, Eliana Hernández, y Gracia Echeverría.