The exhibition with the millenary remedy of the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano as the protagonist opens tomorrow at Casa de México until 9 January.
It is an exhibition of contemporary art that connects different forms of knowledge: the expeditions to the recently discovered New World; the treatises on botany and medicinal plants; the ancestral knowledge of the properties of plants and flowers; and the study of the materials and painting techniques used by Nahua artists and scribes as a basis for delving into the forms and chromatisms of the plants painted in the codex by Mariana Castillo Deball, contemporary artist.
The Codex Badiano is the oldest medical text written in the Americas. The manuscript explains methods of medical healing based on indigenous herbalism known until the first half of the 16th century. The document contains pictorial representations of plants accompanied by their names in Nahuatl and explains how they were to be used in Latin. The main element of the exhibition are six large-format watercolours that make up a series entitled Contra Infantium Adustione. The series shows the process of appropriation of the forms, painting materials and technique used by the Nahua artists for the creation of the Codex. The exhibition provides a cultural-historical context to facilitate the understanding of the relevance of the Codex Badiano with illustrations, by incorporating historical documents that give an account of the events that were happening in parallel to the production of the Codex in the newly constituted New Spain.
