Over the past decade, artist Lucila Gradín (Bariloche, 1981) has collaborated with homeopaths, healers, philosophers, and women farmers to recover forms of knowledge that recognize plants as teachers and guides. A turning point in her practice came with the discovery that all medicinal plants are also dye plants—a realization that led her to understand the colors they release as healing, expansive waves. Lucila’s working methodology subverts the narratives of Western painting—in which she was trained—where plant life has historically been reduced to a decorative or secondary motif. Instead, the artist activates the dyeing metabolism of plants, allowing them to “paint” themselves. In her studio—closer to a kitchen than to a laboratory—she boils roots, macerates leaves, and steeps fibers in what she describes as a body-to-body encounter with plants. Chinchamale: la comunidad de las plantas (Chinchamale: The Community of Plants) emerged from a trip to the community of K’acllaraccay, in the heights of Moray (Cusco), where Lucila joined the Las Warmi collective in a process of reciprocal learning around the medicinal species of the Andean corridor. Among them, chinchamale—used to regulate blood flow—was the one that most intrigued her, as it can only thrive in coexistence with other plants. This condition of biological interdependence became a point of departure for the artist to imagine alternative forms of political organization grounded in care and reciprocity. The scientific history of chinchamale resounds as a counterpoint. In 1795, botanist Hipólito Ruiz López, a member of the Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru and Chile, named it Krameria lappacea and documented its properties, thereby appropriating Indigenous knowledge and integrating it into European science and the imperial economy. In response to this extractivist genealogy, Lucila proposes a symbolic reversal: restoring the plant’s agency and its capacity for relation. The project comprises seven textile pieces that incorporate the species that accompany chinchamale—marco, llaulli, kiswara, qolle, cheqche, and chiri chiri—revealing a living network of symbiotic complicities. Finally, as part of a recurring installative gesture in her practice, Lucila has painted the gallery walls with yerba mate, infusing the space with the energy of this master plant of South America. The yerba, a symbol of dialogue and communion, transforms the white cube into a living habitat that breathes with and sustains the sensitive ecosystem recreated by the artist.