CURATORIAL STATEMENT Nueva Flora, is part of an ongoing project by Colombian artist María Elvira Escallón, which consists of interventions done directly to native trees in Colombian forests. The mural is a photographic document of a branch carved into a traditional furniture form by an artisan. The almost surreal carving assigns an alternative function and identity to a living body —the tree is transformed into a consumer good before it even stops being a tree. This very provocative image brings to mind the rapacious appetite of capital and manufacturing and its economic and environmental implications. As a native species, the tree also bears the memory of colonial history, in particular, the Royal Botanical Expeditions to the “New World” conducted during the period of exploration in the 1700s through which the Spanish crown claimed much of South America as its own. Nueva Flora invites to a meditation on the nature of transformation fashioned by economic politics, colonial history, science, and culture.