in collaboration with María Vilca
Community Garden Las Yungas: Walk from the Museo de la Cárcova, UNA (National Art University) to Barrio Rodrigo Bueno, Buenos Aires
In the frame of the program Las Tres Ecologías, curated by Alfredo Aracil
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
María Vilca is a health worker and activist from the Province of Jujuy who has lived for over 20 years in Barrio Rodrigo Bueno, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires currently facing conflict with the city government, which aims to evict residents to urbanize the area.
During the pandemic, María and other women established a community garden to grow food for their neighborhood and provide environmental education. Today, the Community Garden Las Yungas offers gardening workshops for both children and adults, aiming to share knowledge and foster resilient networks.
In the context of the ongoing conflict in Rodrigo Bueno, the workshop Malezas Resistentes by Julia Mensch and María Vilca focused on amaranth resistance strategies and provided amaranth seeds from the Institute of Research and Technological Development for Family Farming (Ipaf) in Hornillos, Province of Jujuy.
The workshop is part of Las Tres Ecologías, a project that began in early 2023 as an extension of the Modern Museum's art programs. After the pandemic, the intention was to reflect on the value of art in psychic, environmental, and community health. At a time of shrinking public spaces and deteriorating ecosystems, the program was based on the hope that art can valorize and regenerate relationships between people, the earth, and the more-than-human life forms that coexist on this planet.
During these two years, the Museum served as a means to carry out proposals for workshops and spaces for artistic and social research, which allowed the articulation of a community of practice and learning around community and environmental health issues, a network of creators, researchers, neighbors, organizations and institutions of culture and health.
Midya Zingman and Maite Galdós, Museo de Arte Moderno
