Bridging herbaria cultural heritage and digital art – Immaterial herbaria

Abstract

Migratory movement changes the way in which people perceive and feel their nations. Art allows us to enquire about the way members of diasporas are stimulated and confronted with a plethora of feelings as loss and grief, empathy, hope and joy when they see familiar plants collected from their countries of origin among herbarium samples. In the case of the Venezuelan diaspora, nostalgia for a recent past and memories of the homeland configure the imagined Venezuelan nation now that people living abroad („diasporic subjects” in the sense of Martinez Parra 2020). Some Venezuelans take plants from their gardens with them when they leave their country. Many of these people take orchids with them, that remind them of their origin and which they nurture in their new countries.