Map #8 Mexico
I arrived in Mexico City on my birthday. After the nature-drenched Costa Rica, the colourful crowded bustle of Mexico City was a change of pace. It also the start of Día de los Muertos, and I landed right in the historic centre where the celebrations were already underway. I stayed for seven days with another artist whose home and studio sat side by side. We toasted both my birthday and the country’s festival with tequila, and I spent the week taking in the sights..and the food.
I visited the Anthropology Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, this marked the beginning of learning about Mesoamerican cultures in a deeper way.
My next stop was Cholula, and honestly, it’s my favourite place so far. It’s smaller, bursting with colour, music, art, culture, and incredible food. I stayed in a community arts space run by a couple from Oaxaca, who hosted a pop-up restaurant where I got to try regional delicacies, fancy mezcal shots, and the best hot chocolate.
During these weeks I didn’t paint—I kept working on the illustrations for Mind the Gap, usually from shaded cafés.
This led me to my final destination: Puebla, where I began my residency at Arquetopia, supported by a grant from Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol. The residency’s title was Botany and the Mapping of Ignorance—the perfect fit considering how I have been using ferns to direct my artistic narrative during this whole travel journey.
The Residency — Time, Space, Empire
I knew this residency would be significant. It was my final stop, and within days it became clear that it would reshape my entire art practice. I can’t wait to share the details with you! I’ll start with some photos from the Puebla area.
My residency included Spanish lessons, botany instruction, weekly museum trips, studio time, and two mentorship meetings with co-founder Francisco Guevara. He shared four essays exploring colonisation, empire, landscape, and power—texts that pushed my critical thinking harder than anything I’ve encountered in years. I was genuinely excited to be back in an environment of reading, research, and dialogue.
As soon as I showed Francisco my maps, we found ourselves deep in conversational rhythm about colonisation, landscape and female history. I approached the topic with openness, and a desire to understand how my work may participate in, reflect, or push against these histories.
Searching for the Mexico Fern
As you might know, in each country I’ve found a fern whose etymology reveals the essence or purpose of that stage of the journey:
Switzerland — expand
Colombia — elevate
Panama — wing/feather
Costa Rica — golden vein
But in Puebla, I couldn’t find one anywhere.
Was the map shifting? Becoming figurative instead of abstract now that I was reaching the end?
6 days upon arriving, there was a visit to the Botanical Garden in Cholula, one of the Arquetopia interns spotted a fern, or a ‘helecho’ in Spanish. These ferns that had been purposely planted in so ”we” had to ask the staff if I could buy a few sprigs to take with me. After choosing a few, the exchange happened. I didn’t take it, it had to be given to me. Something that hadn’t happened previously and was a poignant moment upon reflection with how this links to relationships and ownership. The name of this fern is called….Nephrolepis Cordifolia - the etymological meaning of Cordifolia is ‘heart leaf’.
Now the art could begin.
The Heart, the Spine, the Rose
Before travelling, I had grown a mandala garden at my Birmingham allotment. Five rose bushes sat at the centre—one red for the heart. That one never grew. It stayed as a wooden, anatomical heart look-a-like. (pic in gallery)
Alongside this, I’d been drawn to concave discs on my mini adventures here—one filled with bubbling water and light, another used for projection, another made of brass that reverberated sound. I decided to paint a concave disc that opened to the heart fern.
I only travelled with the paints I could carry, and so I mixed a Rose Madder and a Sap Green—they’re complementary colours so I could adjust the tone of the colour. I found that Rose Madder carried two important meanings for me:
A Stephen King novel about a woman who steps into a painting of a goddess to reclaim her power.
A root pigment historically used to dye British military coats red.
After painting the disc, I printed the fern between the folded pages of my concertina sketchbook. I then felt a quick impulse to splash the diluted Rose Madder with a pipette. Red droplets scattered across the pages like blood. Some fell onto the Costa Rica “green landscape” pages—connecting the maps in a way I hadn’t planned.
Was this bloodshed? Regeneration?
Maybe it was both.
The Spine, the Root Chakra, and the Return
The fern print looked like a spine—and that clicked. In Costa Rica, I’d talked with the other residents about my fractured coccyx (from Switzerland) which is still healing.
The coccyx is where the Root Chakra sits—security, foundation, belonging.
I incorporated the seed syllable LAM, whose symbol looks like a dancing figure—echoing the “dancing person” archetype that appeared back in Colombia. Using inspiration from the Mayan script scrolls that represent sound on their drawings, I split the symbol and fused it with the heart-spine fern. It became a figure dancing, chanting, moving energy through the spine and heart.
I wondered if intuition is enough, I was advised yes, and to an “Index of Technique” to understand the language my intuition was already speaking. That clicked something open. Now I know with my mind what my dots mean by my intuition. My marks. My patterns. The rhythm of my hand. I can work intuitively and still understand the soul-logic beneath it.
The creative circuit is connected - spine - heart - mind - soul.
The Return Journey
In two days I start the long trip back to the UK. I’m returning with a new foundation—spine, heart, root, route—acknowledged and integrated. I don’t know exactly what’s next, but I feel ready.
I still have many blank pages to fill and many more ferns to find.
I’ll keep documenting everything here and on Instagram @routesbyalliejoy.
Thank you for witnessing this journey.
