ACHKAY. A beautiful potato field will remind you of my existence

2025
Public installation: plant sacks, potato plants, brooms
Variable dimensions

In her site-specific installation ACHKAY. A beautiful potato field will remind you of my existence, Zambrano Almidón reclaims and reimagines the figure of the “witch” as a symbol of resistance, dignity, and ancestral knowledge. Installed in front of Freiburg’s Johanniskirche—a site deeply tied to the city’s Christian heritage—the work invokes a parallel history: between 1546 and 1599, more than a thousand people were executed in Freiburg for alleged witchcraft, most of them women.

Zambrano Almidón, echoing Andean traditions in postcolonial Peru, draws from an oral retelling of Hänsel und Gretel passed down by her grandmother—a version in which the so-called witch, Achkay, is a powerful woman who cultivates a lush potato field and, after being violently punished, transforms into the Andean mountain range. In this myth, Achkay is not a villain, but a maternal, earth-bound force akin to Pachamama. Her presence is not erased; it is embedded into the land itself. This installation transforms that story into a decolonial, feminist counter-monu- ment: Andean sacks with wild potatoes stand as a living memorial, reclaiming the dignity, agri- cultural knowledge, and spiritual force of those vilified as witches—those whose lives were often extinguished under patriarchal and colonial forces alike.