Maria Munar: Sentient Plant Allies in Alien Landscapes

As a first-generation Colombian immigrant navigating the diaspora, I carry a sense of fragmentation—a simultaneous feeling of belonging and estrangement to multiple places and cultural identities. As a woman, my body exists within a space of both vulnerability and resilience, shaped by histories of objectification and reclamation. The duality of culture, the fragility of femininity, and the cycles of impermanence and regeneration—these tensions are central to my work.  Photography becomes my tool, and collage my method of reconstructing these fractured identities. In this process, I turn to the plant world as allies—an interconnected thread weaving through borders, climates, and cultures. Our relationship with plants is not ornamental; it is fundamental, biological, and spiritual.

Through photography, I capture and reconfigure imagery from nature, abstracting it by incorporating collage and images from the human body. Together, these elements create and represent an echo of shared experiences of growth, adaptation, and interconnectedness. In each piece, concept and craft merge, forming new ecosystems of resilience and renewal. A petal is personified into a sentient being. A leaf becomes an extraterrestrial landscape. These artistic transformations invite the viewer to consider how an investigation of parts and fragmentation can bring us closer to wholeness and connection—not only to ourselves but also to one another.​