Malas madres / Lives hanging by a string was the first of the artistic interventions made for the public spaces of Tabakalera.
Jerónimo Hagerman used the rows of balconies with their varying heights to create a hanging garden of plants connected with ropes that evoke the tangle of a ship's lines. Malas madres / Lives hanging by a string seeked to gain other perceptions of the building: feeling vertigo when we observe another living being that is suspended from such heights warns us of our own fragile vital state, anchored to the earth's surface. The relationship between human and non-human nature suggests to us the scale that we occupy with respect to the rest of the universe.
From an anthropocentric perspective, in order to connect ourselves with other living beings, we tend to humanise them, just as occurs when naming pets, fictional characters, or plants. Based on this very human behaviour, the installation's plants are commonly known as 'malas madres' ('bad mothers') in Mexico because they push their sprouts out of the nest, while in Spain these plants are known as 'cintas' ('ribbons').
This project was developed in collaboration with Jon Begiristain.
