For generations, communities around the world have cultivated intimate, reciprocal relationships with medicinal plants, deeply linked with spiritual transcendence, health, memory, and identity. Yet these same plants, once central to collective well-being and knowledge systems, have been systematically demonized, extracted, and commodified.

"Stig-Mata" traces the suppression of botanical knowledge as a tool of domination, where plants were not only outlawed, but their keepers silenced and exploited. Through a hybrid of materials, symbols, and research, the artist reclaims the aesthetic and spiritual presence of these plants, honoring the wisdom carriers, who have risked and continue to risk persecution, to safeguard their healing traditions.

The exhibition challenges viewers to look beyond fear and stereotypes and to see these plants and fungi in a new light. It’s about remembering what was lost, challenging who gets to decide what is “legitimate,” and celebrating the resilience of first nations and ancestral knowledge.