“..With a curious and permeable attention, Lucila Gradín has devoted her artistic practice to encounters, exchanges and processes with dye and medicinal plants, with special emphasis on native species. For Gradín in each bud there is a possibility of teaching, mystery and healing. While the generous and adaptive growth of these plants make them close and accessible to people, Western hegemonic thinking has placed a significant cultural distance between humans and nature. The demand for ever faster effects, transactions and results truncate episodes of presence, reflection and interconnection..” Tania Puente, text for the exhibition Sibiology artistic practices for a planet in emergency, CCK, 2021.

My work has to do with research on dyeing and medicinal plants. Lately I have put my attention and special interest in native plants, since our original ecosystem has practically disappeared, there are only very small samples of what this landscape used to be. Through the mythologies I will find small keys to understand that cosmogony that has been invisible for centuries: medicinal uses, dyeing abilities and shamanic practices. All these uses and knowledge are hidden in the mythologies that are linked to certain plants or trees.
In collaboration with Eloísa Castellanos, healer, Esteban Liberczuk, homeopathic doctor, Noelia Billi, philosopher and more interlocutors, I am building a medicinal and dyeing herbarium of the region, materialized in: Works, writings, talks, publications, etc.
As an artist, I am interested in displaying this knowledge to think about color beyond its hue, approaching it from what the dye source (plant) proposes. Assume color as an expansive bomb of health and knowledge, from its tinctorial capacities to the highest knowledge that the plant can provide us
“..The chromatic use that Gradín obtains from his work with herbs, roots, seeds, leaves and flowers is political insofar as it highlights the recovery of curative and dyeing knowledge. Each tonality and each nuance emerge as vital narratives, which with time and care develop a slow progress on paper, pigments that leave traces and open paths with different depths…” Tania Puente, text for the exhibition Symbiology artistic practices for a planet in emergency , CCK, 2021.