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Campo Carmín is a single-channel video that explores the material, historical, and cultural significance of grana cochinilla—the carmine pigment derived from insects native to Mesoamerica and once at the center of colonial trade networks. Filmed in Mexico, the work traces the complete cycle of production: from cactus cultivation and insect breeding to pigment extraction and its use in textile dyeing.
The film is structured in three movements: the nopale fields of the Nopaltepec Valley, where cactus pads host the insects; the greenhouse environments where women nurture, harvest, and process the cochineal; and the microscopic scale of the insect itself. These images are interwoven with a written narration that unfolds like a parallel score: beginning with a Mixtec myth of gods whose blood stained the nopal, it moves through testimonies of women harvesters, reflections on reproduction and care, and fragments of colonial history. This text turns the video into a layered composition where myth, observation, and history resonate together.
By foregrounding the voices and embodied practices of Indigenous and mestiza women, Campo Carmín situates cochineal as both material and memory: a pigment tied to intergenerational labor, cultural survival, and extractive economies. The harvesting of cochineal, once integral to colonial wealth, continues today as a living practice rooted in land-based knowledge.
The presentation of the work in Lanzarote deepens these resonances. After Mexico’s independence, the Spanish Crown sought to preserve cochineal production by transplanting it to its remaining colonies, including the Canary Islands. This history forges a direct link between Mexico and Lanzarote—two geographies connected by pigment and by the colonial logics of extraction. In this way, Campo Carmín becomes not only a meditation on material culture but also a narrative of blood, care, and continuity, where sound, image, and text weave together a living archive of the carmine field.
