Paula Flores: Night Whispers

Exhibition by Paula Flores.
In the frame of the exhibition series and dialogue platform GLIMPSES: the intergenerationality of identity

In Night Whispers, Paula Flores creates a living installation that changes through the life cycle of mushrooms. Asking the fundamental question, how can we fall in love with nature? Night Whispers welcomes people into the installation by participating in a ritual practiced by some groups of the Maya people. The Maya believed that with this ritual, a child learns to love and respect nature. Through the installation, there are several actions that visitors can and are encouraged to participate in to start or deepen their love and relationship with nature.

Engaging with concepts of growth, decay, and regeneration, the work reflects on ancestral knowledge and forgotten ecological respect. Through this organic material and a sonic collaboration with composer Citlali Gomez, Flores reimagines memory not as something static, but as something alive — shifting, decomposing, and transforming.

Her approach resonates deeply with the concerns of GLIMPSES: The Intergenerationality of Identity, as it draws attention to the ways in which identity and legacy are embedded not only in human relationships, but in our entanglement with the natural world. By challenging anthropocentric views, Night Whispers reminds us that ancestral memory may live just as much in fungi and soil as in family stories or cultural rituals.
A project by Ancestral Synonyms and KASAL in collaboration with eindorf.
Curated by Guadalupe Aldrete
Funded by MA7 Department of Culture of the City of Vienna and the 15th District of Vienna