Flora Incognita: Picturing Nature in the New World
While the unfamiliar nature of the New World was a source of economic wealth, it also provoked deep anxiety, threatening established authorities of the Old World from Galen to the Bible. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish Empire attempted to bring American flora under representational and taxonomic control. The resulting manuscripts are evidence of European desires, but also show the perspective of the classically-educated indigenous pupils who illustrated them. The stylistic choices they display between Nahua and European systems of representation reveal the indigenous artists’ negotiation of a colonial identity vis-à-vis the pre-conquest past and new colonial structures. Through a close visual analysis of the images of three specific plants (prickly-pear cactus, cacao and tobacco), I demonstrate the centrality of botanical images as a privileged window into the dynamics of post-conquest subject formation.
Alejandra Rojas, Visiting Professor
Rojas received her PhD from Harvard in 2015 and is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at The Ohio State University.