MARFA — Join artists Tina Rivera and Sandra Harper for the opening of “Ecstatic Elata,”on Saturday, March 1, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Do Right Hall, 110 W. Dallas. Their work explores the intersections of language, ritual, myth and the natural world in the Chihuahuan Desert.
As Harper writes in her artist statement: “My work explores how plants and animals have shaped our collective memory through ritual and myth. Plants give us life. Food and medicine and the air we breathe.”
“I began this Plant Project in the Chihuahuan Desert, observing the pollination event between the blooming yucca elata and its moth, tegeticula yuccasella. The yucca flower is a sublime container for its sexual organs. The female yucca moth lays her eggs in the ovary of the flower. Hatching out, the larvae thrive on the seeds in the developing fruit. The blossom and its moth expressing their symbiotic relationship took hold of my imagination.”
“At the same time, I was humbled by this magnificent yucca which had given much to the survival of the people who have lived in the desert. I wanted to listen to this plant and to the desert.”