Graduate Studies

Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media and Design (MA, MDes and MFA)

Gabriela Benitez

Yerba mate series

In this installation, I approached the public via the sensed smell of yerba mate. Mate is an ancestral plant of South America used to make a popular hot drink in Argentina. Here, I buy it in Latin markets in the form of crushed leaves. In this work, I included a public performance using the mate leaves; I arranged them in pattern on a long table. Since the leaves have a strong odour, moving and placing them in this way allowed me to created a space centered around the sensed smell of the leaves. It was exhibited at the Open Space Gallery of Toronto, in April 2019.

“My recent research revolves around materiality, discourse and performativity and how they intermingle with sensing processes, particularly memory and identity formation. A series of work that included yerba mate helped me to navigate consuming/coping mechanisms that result from moving between states of being as insider/outsider. In my cravings of yerba mate there are inscriptions of politics of the senses as well as historical representations; from my Argentinian original culture as well as from my new culture(s), as this material-social ritual-stimulant interacts within new experience/environments. In turn, my craving of yerba mate 'translates' global representations and imaginaries.”