That first action took place on the land of Paola Chodil, between Huillinco and Cucao. Wrapped in linen cloths, fifteen varieties of Chilote potatoes were planted in a field that also holds fruit trees, onions, rhubarb, nalcas, and murtas. For months, under earth and rain, the living matter went to work: the potatoes sprouted, earthworms moved through the soil, the textiles were stained and disintegrated. When we unearthed the cloths, they were marked with textures and traces I could never have predicted. Each was an imprint, a collaboration between soil and time.

Since then, I’ve kept thinking of those little potatoes as underground stars. I’ve drawn constellations, collected data on their shapes, and learned from scientists like Anita Behn and Carolina Lizana, who study their properties and resilience in the face of climate change. I’ve sketched ideas for future installations: ceramic and plaster bowls suspended like hydroponic crops, polished steel mirrors as false pools of water, and mural drawings that repeat a phrase that has stayed with me since: to me, papitas are like stars in the dark.

This project doesn’t seek a final exhibition. It belongs to a stage of material thinking that develops at a slow, almost botanical pace. To me, it holds the same value as my publicly exhibited works—only its rhythm is different. More and more, I’m interested in working from in-between stages, from what is not yet known, from practice as a form of research.

In Las papitas, as in other moments of my work, material transformation is also a transformation of the way we look. I bury clay, fabric, potatoes, and what comes back is never the same. It’s not only the objects that change—the questions do too. This project has become a way of thinking with my hands, with my body, with other women, and with the soil. And even though it has no final public form yet, it is full of subterranean life, like humus, waiting for its moment to emerge.