Art, Archives, and Indigenous Botanical Knowledge

November 13, 2026

3 to 5 p.m. | Mertz Library

A Conversation with Blanka Amezkua and Cynthia Santos Briones

Organized by the Bronx Food Humanities Initiative and the New York Botanical Garden

Join artists Blanka Amezkua and Cinthya Santos Briones for a conversation exploring the intersections of food, art, and Indigenous botanical knowledge. Drawing on Nahua traditions and historical sources, including the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano—a 1552 illustrated manuscript documenting Indigenous Mexican medicinal plants and their uses—the artists will discuss how ancestral plant and food traditions inform their contemporary artistic practices and research.

Held in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Reading Room, the conversation will also offer participants an opportunity to explore selected materials from the Library’s collections and reflect on the connections between botanical knowledge, cultural memory, and artistic expression.

Free and open to the public. This event is made possible through the support of the Mellon Foundation.

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About the Speakers

A person with red glasses and dangling black earrings poses for a photo in front of a stone wall with speckled white lichens covering it

Blanka Amezkua is an interdisciplinary Mexican-American artist, cultural organizer, and educator, formally trained as a painter. Her practice encompasses traditional paper cutting techniques, textile-based works, painting, and community-driven curatorial initiatives, exploring pre-Hispanic traditions, botanical knowledge, and immigrant advocacy.

Amezkua has played a significant role in the Bronx arts community through two artist-run initiatives: Bronx Blue Bedroom Project (2008 to 2010), established in her bedroom, and AAA3A (Alexander Avenue Apartment 3A, 2016 to 2024), operated from her living room in Mott Haven. Both spaces became intimate exhibition venues and community hubs supporting immigrant, emerging, and underrepresented artists.

In 2025, she co-curated ¡Te Amo Porque S.O.S. Pueblo!, celebrating immigrant communities through art and grassroots solidarity. A 2026 National Performance Network Creation Fund recipient, Amezkua is developing Codex in Motion: A Living Apothecary, a multidisciplinary environmental performance activating the ancestral botanical knowledge preserved in the 1552 Codex de la Cruz-Badiano.

Mentions of her work and projects can be found in various national and international publications. She was born in Mexico City.

A black and white photo of a person in a dark shirt, with long dark hair, posing for a photo

Cinthya Santos Briones is an interdisciplinary artist, visual researcher, and educator of Nahua Indigenous heritage based in New York. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Photography from Ithaca College and a Certificate in Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism from the International Center of Photography (ICP). She worked for a decade at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), researching Indigenous migration, codices, textiles, and traditional medicine. She is currently a faculty member in the Studio Arts Practice MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and serves as Assistant Director at the Mexican Studies Institute at CUNY.

Her projects have received support from Magnum Foundation, En Foco, National Geographic Research and Exploration, We Women, the Mellon Foundation, Wave Hill, NYU’s Hemispheric Institute, BRIC, and El Museo del Barrio. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and BuzzFeed, among other venues. She has facilitated community workshops on alternative photographic processes at The Met, MoMA PS1, Worthless Studios, Photoville, and BRIC.

Cinthya is also a member of Colectiva Infancia, a collective of anthropologists engaged in ethnographic and visual research on childhood, migration, violence, urban studies, and epistemologies of the Global South. Learn more at infanciasenmovimiento.org.

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