TANATOCRESIS
GUADALUPE QUESADA
Thanatocresis is a word that defines the relationship that occurs when a living being benefits from a dead organism.
The tree that is part of the installation used to live next to my old ceramics studio and coincidentally it was thrown away at the same time I had to move. It seemed appropriate to use it to pay homage to the change of cycle I was going through.
The ceramic figures that inhabit the tree represent two species of organisms inspired by the fungi kingdom. At one extreme of the trunk lives one species and on the other side a new form of life emerges spontaneously. Both adapt to the environment and proliferate.
In the center of the trunk a biological encounter and interaction take place. We do not know if it is a symbiosis in which both species benefit, or if the new creatures have arrived as a parasite to disrupt the harmony of the ecosystem.
By surrounding the trunk we discover that the older species arises from the same source as the new one. With this, I want to represent the correlation between both species, coming from the same origin, indispensable and interdepen- dent.
My main motivation for the creation of this installation was to talk about change, the inevitable impermanence, cycles and the end as a beginning. Like organisms, we not only have to adapt to survive, but also to accept. I invite the public to accept change, without giving it a positive or negative connotation.