Poetic Justice

Poetic Justice explores how language, imagery, and imagination can serve as both instruments of colonial power and means of healing. The title refers to a form of justice that is not administered through the courts, but through art: a symbolic correction to histories in which the voices of Indigenous and Black communities have been systematically erased, distorted, or appropriated.

The works stem from a fundamental question: who has the right to name a world? From the moment European colonists set foot on American soil, language was used as a form of possession. Landscapes were given new names, plants and animals were classified according to the Latin system, while centuries-old Indigenous knowledge was expropriated and the original names disappeared from the archives. Botanical illustrations, maps, and travelogues presented themselves as objective science, but were at the same time instruments of colonial control.