Erika
DeFreitas

The processes that drive our bodies and our movements, our memories and our cultures, span Erika DeFreitas’s work and thought. In studies for gardens, a hundred or so collages combine samples of various shapes and textures evoking plants or textiles that, together, form possible arrangements of abstract or invented gardens. Her hands appear in a video that shows the process of composing and decomposing the collages. In her exploration of the symbolic and moral aspects of the portrayals of plants through colonial history, DeFreitas manipulates, re-establishes, and reimagines the potential assemblages of these gardens. The infinite multiplicity of reconfigurations created by her delicate gestures reminds us that cross-contamination and transformation are inherent to transmission. A similar idea is evoked in a small monument, with its hibiscus petals made of raw clay. The hibiscus flower has personal significance for DeFreitas; whenever it is mentioned, her Guyanese mother recalls a story from back home. Here, it is also a metaphor for the regenerative power of plants that captures our attention; from cycle to cycle, even if altered, the plant—the memory—is perpetuated. The petals, dispersed but not damaged by this fragmentation, foreshadow the passing of a memory to a future generation.