Eva Aguila: Bajo la Huerta

Active Cultures presents Bajo la Huerta (Beneath the Orchard), a newly commissioned performance lecture by Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Eva Aguila that traces the hidden costs of the avocado trade, asking what it means to eat an avocado from Mexico. Led by personal research conducted by Aguila in her family’s home state of Michoacán, the work blends video, sound, and image to follow the fruit from its prehistoric dispersal by giant ground sloths, through the USDA agricultural explorers who carried it north, to the archaeological site of Tingambato in the heart of Michoacán’s avocado belt, where roughly 90 hectares of orchards now cover ancient ruins. From there it traces the accidental propagation of the Hass cultivar by a Southern California mailman into its present life as a global commodity. Drawing on interviews with scientists and researchers across the region, Aguila returns to Michoacán, where US demand for the crop has led to compounded harms across natural ecosystems and community life. What does it mean to have a “superfood” available year-round at the grocery store, and what does that convenience cost the people and land from which it comes? Moving between this multi-layered regional story and its global consequences, Aguila examines how far removed we've become from the origins of our food, holding the tension between extraction and erasure on one hand, and land, memory, and belonging on the other. Bajo la Huerta will be presented at 2220 Arts + Archives on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8, 2026. —— Bajo la Huerta is a commission of Active Cultures. Major support provided by the Angeles Art Fund and Teiger Foundation.