ISABELLA BERNAL

For centuries we have dug into the soil, turning the earth to bury seeds, waiting for the soul to sprout from their center and transform. For centuries we have invented rituals to celebrate the fruits that lie indestructible in the layers of the earth. The seed represents a cosmic connection that exists between the earth, life, and the universe; it functions as a cyclical, analogous, and repetitive mechanism that is inevitably incorporated into our bodies.

In 2020, I began collecting the food scraps that were trapped in the siphon's grate. It was a random exercise in selecting seeds that came to me from the municipalities surrounding my place of residence at the time: Cartagena.

From this selection process, I constructed a personal journal. It became a portrait of the mutual exploration between my body and the earth through photography. As the days passed, the seeds began to dry on a wooden table on the balcony, wrinkling, changing color, becoming something else. Beyond their reproductive value and their possible yearning to return to the earth, their forms revealed tensions, frictions, and ambiguities. The seeds' constant and rapidly visible transformation brought me closer to their materiality and became evident in the scanning process, where the trace of dust manifests itself in the Seeds series.

Isabella Bernal
Artist