The Elegy of Artocarpus Altillis & Maricongo

Gamaliel Rodríguez’s works interrogate infrastructures of egregious development and the extractive legacy inscribed on the Caribbean landscape. La elegía del Artocarpus Altilis & Maricongo uses inorganic colors in reference to chemical tests on Puerto Rican soils, as well as the genetic modification of seeds, a predominant practice in the banana industry. Central to the composition of this work is the Maricongo plant, also called Rhinoceros Horn, and the Artocarpus Altilis, or breadfruit tree, in the background. Due to their high carbohydrate content, these two crops were introduced from the Pacific to the Caribbean by European colonizers in the 18th century as food for enslaved people. They are now part of Puerto Rican gastronomic culture. Rodríguez depicts a kind of evolution of both plants, questioning these crops’ place in the culinary and pictorial imagination.