Speculative Ecologies and Sacred Grief
Elsa Muñoz in her Chicago studio, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
Elsa Muñoz’s work has an enchanting ability to capture the in-between spaces, imbued with stillness and light, yet resonating with a depth that lingers beyond the canvas. During my first studio visit with Elsa in 2019, I was deeply moved by her Controlled Burn series, where landscapes, shaped by prescribed fires, were consumed by flames and gave way to the quiet aftermath of regrowth. Her ability to distill complex emotional and ecological cycles into visual poetry was striking, and I knew then that her practice was something truly special.
During our conversation, we explored themes of spirituality, deep ecology, dream work, and our shared responsibility to honor the land. Elsa’s work extends an invitation to see the world with a heightened awareness of care and renewal, both in nature and within ourselves. Her paintings suggest a parallel process: just as fire clears the way for new life, we, too, can shed aspects of our lives to foster growth.
Now, five years later, I have the privilege of curating Botánica Apokalíptica at Pecha Projects, an exhibition that builds upon these long-standing conversations. Elsa’s exploration of speculative flora, post-wildfire landscapes, and ecological resilience reflects not only an artistic inquiry but a deeply personal meditation on adaptation, hope, and beauty. Today, I sit with Elsa to discuss the themes that shape her practice as we prepare to share this exhibition with the world.
Elsa Muñoz, Pilgrimage To The Next World, 2025. Installation view from Botánica Apokalíptica at Pecha Projects.
Michelle Ruiz: Your artistic practice spans over 20 years, rooted in deep research on ecology, ecomysticism, grief work, dreamwork, healing, and spirituality. Can you share the origins of your journey? What first drew you to these themes, and how did they become central to your practice today?
Elsa Muñoz: All the research began in my body. My lived experience growing up on the South Side of Chicago shaped the questions that would guide me. Violence was a prominent theme, both personal and collective. It left behind deep grief- an inheritance I carried unknowingly, and one that would ultimately guide me toward the interconnected threads of my work: ecology, eco-mysticism, griefwork, and healing. These themes are not separate but part of one long story.
What I know now, after years of self-healing, is that unexpressed grief manifests in the body in ways we do not always understand. For me, it took the form of persistent digestive issues—pains and discomforts that Western doctors could not explain. My true healing journey began when my mother took me to see a yerbero, a Mexican folk herbalist. He listened as my mother listed my symptoms, nodding patiently before stepping forward to meet me at eye level. He cupped my face in his calloused hand and said simply, "Oh, this child is very sad. That’s all. Too much sadness. We need to release it."
He sent us home with bags of bitter herbs and instructions. The teas and tinctures would begin to break apart the painful knot of grief lodged in my stomach, but the herbs could only do part of the work. The rest, he said, was my responsibility. It required desahogamiento—the practice of “undrowning.”
This experience was a revelation. The yerbero taught me that physical symptoms could stem from spiritual wounds, and that the body and spirit were inseparable. More than that, I learned that the natural world holds medicine not just for the body, but for the soul. This realization altered my perception of the world, allowing me to see nature as an animate force—alive, intimate, and healing.
I had heard the word desahogamiento before. My mother used it often, encouraging me to unburden myself through crying, talking, or making art. She understood intuitively what the yerbero affirmed: grief needs movement, expression, a way out of the body. I was fortunate to have a mother who not only allowed me to feel my sadness deeply but also encouraged me to transform it.
These two discoveries—the spiritual medicine of the natural world and the power of desahogamiento—became the foundation of my artistic lens. My work is rooted in these understandings, in the belief that grief can be alchemized into beauty, that nature is an ally in our healing, and that art itself is a form of undrowning.
Installation view of Botánica Apokalíptica (2025) at Pecha Projects.
MR: Your solo exhibition, Botánica Apokalíptica, marks a new chapter with the debut of your Fire Follower painting series—an evolution of the storytelling in your Controlled Burn series, which you’ve developed over the past decade. While Controlled Burn explored the role of prescribed fires in restoring ecological balance, Fire Follower shifts focus to the resilient flora that emerges in the aftermath of wildfires. As climate crises and devastating wildfires continue to impact the West Coast, your work feels especially timely. At what point did the Fire Follower narrative take shape for you, and how did you recognize it as the natural evolution of your practice?
EM: The Fire Follower narrative took shape gradually, as I spent more time researching and reflecting on the themes that had always been central to my work. My Controlled Burn series was rooted in the idea of fire as an agent of both destruction and renewal. But more than that, those paintings became meditations on grief: the grief of losing Indigenous land stewardship practices (like prescribed burning) through colonization, and the grief carried within the land itself. With that series, I wanted to create gentle spaces to sit with those feelings, to acknowledge fire’s necessity while mourning what had been lost.
As I continued learning about what happens after the fire, I simultaneously encountered the writings of spiritual teacher Martín Prechtel. In The Smell of Rain on Dust, Prechtel writes that grief and praise are inseparable—that to truly grieve is to recognize the depth of our love and reverence for what has been lost. His words gave language to something I had been sensing but had not yet articulated: that grief, when fully honored, naturally gives way to praise. I started to see fire-following plants as a powerful expression of this. These plants don’t just survive fire; they depend on it. Their seeds lie dormant for years, sometimes decades, waiting for the right conditions to bloom. This idea of hidden potential—of beauty emerging from devastation—felt like a quality of praise that could only be reached after moving through the depths of grief. If Controlled Burn was about grief, then Fire Follower is about praise.
As climate crises intensify and wildfires become more frequent, I felt an urgency to explore this imagery now, with Fire Followers acting as gentle offerings after great loss.
Installation view of Botánica Apokalíptica (2025) at Pecha Projects.
MR: In this exhibition, you have beautifully interwoven the powerful writings of Joy Harjo, specifically responding to her poem A Map to the Next World through your painting Flowers of Rage (2025) and your own poem, In the Next World, which hangs as a larger-than-life installation. Harjo explores themes of memory, survival, Indigenous history, transformation, and the passage between worlds—from the fourth to the fifth, both literal and spiritual. Can you share your reflections on the significance of this transition, how Harjo’s teachings have influenced your perspective, and what the fifth world represents within the context of Botánica Apokalíptica?
EM: Joy Harjo’s A Map to the Next World was a profound guide for this collection. I knew from the beginning that I wanted Botánica Apokalíptica to be rooted in the concept of deep time—to expand the conversation beyond our immediate ecological crisis and into a broader imagining of the future. Just as I was beginning to shape the show, a friend shared Harjo’s poem with me, and it became the perfect guiding force.
In Indigenous cosmologies, the transition between worlds is not just metaphorical but deeply spiritual, marking a shift in consciousness, a reckoning with what has been lost, and an invitation to imagine what comes next. I see this moment in history as a collective threshold—we are living through the collapse of systems that have long dictated how we engage with the land and with each other. The fifth world, as Harjo suggests, is one we must learn to navigate with care, carrying forward what is essential and leaving behind what no longer serves us.
My poem, In the Next World, is a small attempt at imagining the fifth world. It envisions a world where new forms of life emerge, shaped by resilience, adaptation, and deep memory. The poem asks: What if the future belongs not to the conquerors, but to those who have learned to endure? What if the next world is not built through dominance, but through communion? Like fire-following flowers, the blooms in In the Next World are patient; they have endured, witnessed the passage of time, and are designed for survival.
MR: Botánica Apokalíptica envisions a speculative ecological future where humans may no longer exist, yet nature persists, adapting in remarkable ways. You describe Future Flowers as evolving hybrids, blending terrestrial traits with marine life forms like jellyfish and anemones. Your sculptures exquisitely embody this vision, merging futurism, deep imagination, and organic evolution. Can you take us inside your creative process and share how you conceptualized these two stunning Future Flowers, along with the unique traits you envisioned for them?
Elsa Muñoz, Future Flower 1: Anemone Solivage (Wandering Sun Anemone), 2025. Paper, wire, clay, paint, sand, 33 x 33 x 25 inches.
EM: The Future Flowers emerged from a question at the heart of Botánica Apokalíptica: If the world were to move on without us, what forms of life might adapt or evolve in our absence? I imagined a world in which vast seas had dried up, forcing marine life to make evolutionary leaps—creatures that once moved with the tides now compelled to find new ways to survive on land. In this world, the boundaries between terrestrial and aquatic life have blurred, giving rise to flora that defy traditional classification. These sculptures are my way of engaging in speculative botany, blending real ecological phenomena with deep imagination.
One of the Future Flowers takes inspiration from the Rose of Jericho, a plant that can desiccate completely and revive when it finds water. I imagined this flower evolving even further—not just enduring drought, but developing a kind of locomotion, much like a jellyfish pulsating through water. In this way, it becomes a hybrid between plant and animal, capable of seeking out more hospitable conditions rather than waiting for them to arrive.
The other Future Flower, Anemone Solivaga (Wandering Sun Anemone), envisions a colossal organism that blurs the line between flora and fauna. Though it resembles a flower, it is, in fact, a predatory being—an evolutionary descendant of cnidarians, an ancient group of marine animals that have existed for over 500 million years. While sea anemones already have the ability to move, this imagined species has adapted to a post-oceanic world, developing greater mobility and scale. No longer bound to water, Anemone Solivaga drifts across landscapes in search of sustenance, using its flowing tendrils to hunt, much like its deep-sea relatives once did. This piece explores a world where the distinctions between plant and animal, rooted and nomadic, have dissolved, giving rise to a new kind of life.
Throughout my creative process, I kept returning to the idea that nature is never static—it is always responding, reshaping, and finding a way forward. The Future Flowers embody that resilience, existing at the intersection of science and myth, offering a glimpse into a world that is both post-human and deeply alive.
Installation view of In the Next World from Botánica Apokalíptica (2025) at Pecha Projects.
Elsa Muñoz: Botánica Apokalíptica is on view at Pecha Projects from April 12 through May 31, 2025.
This interview is available in the exhibition zine published for Botánica Apokalíptica and was edited by Francisco Donoso.
