Lets Go Back To That Magic Place That Only You and I Have Seen (Illuminations), 2023

Grace Rosario Perkins: This is a piece that I made in 2023. So all of the images on the background are flowers. My dad's tribe is Akimel O'odham, which is in the Sonoran desert and central Arizona, parts of Mexico. These are all petroglyphs that were flowers on my dad's land that I collected off the internet. There's a very important thing in broader terms called the Flower World. 

Narrator: The Flower World is a complex belief system created by Indigenous people in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest that included visual language, record-keeping, spiritual narratives, and social orders. 

Grace Rosario Perkins: When I was reading about it, it's just like a poetic space where they talk about chromatism, color, flowers. One thing that I really liked when I was reading something was I learned that one of the words in my dad's language, I think music translates to flowers for your ears. And I thought that was really beautiful. 

I'm in herb school and we talk about plants as the ultimate level of consciousness. Humans are here and we talk, and then there's animals and those are great relational things to have. But then to be really in communion and relationship with plants is something that's extremely important, extremely valuable. They're the greatest teachers. It's like honoring flowers as holy things, which they totally are.