Sara Isabel Medina




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  1. Rutas Metabólicas
  2. Bonanza
  3. Amasadas
  4. La Carna Asada
  5. Papila


   //     Creative strategy


Rutas Metabólicas

(ENG)
2026.   Colección FEMSA, Museo MARCO, LabNL


This project had two components:

  1. Culinary Residency at the Restaurant of Museo MARCO.
  2. Field investigation with LabNL and their communities Microteca, Fotovoz and Autoconstructores.



Culinary Residency at the Restaurant of Museo MARCO.

I was the first of three residents in Rutas Metabólicas, a program that brought the exhibition Constelaciones y derivas: Latin American Art from the FEMSA Collection into the museum’s restaurant, reading food as a living archive of territory, migration, and power.

My residency responded to the exhibition’s first thematic axis, Territory. The result was a three-part menu that I designed together with MARCO’s kitchen team: a pork asado with beans, a lemongrass agua fresca with orange a pork asado with beans, a lemongrass agua fresca with oranges from Nuevo León’s citrus region, and a cake made with mesquite flour and agroecological wheat flour, soaked in mezcal from Laguna de Sánchez and topped with Glorias de Linares (a traditional milk-caramel candy).

Each dish came with a text served alongside the plate, and with questions about the experience of origin, authenticity, and colonization in this territory.

But there was one ingredient I wanted to use in the menu and couldn’t: anacahuita. The other side of the project grew out of that, at LabNL. (read more below)Interview on TERREMOTO

Rutas Metabólicas en Museo MARCO






Texto completo de 
Asado para TodxsTexto completo de
Orígenes y TrayectosTexto completo de
Mexquite, Mexcal, México


Cada platillo se sirvió con un texto acompañante. Diseño de papelería por Andrea Volcán.








Té de Anacahuita:
Research with communities from LabNL


The route continued at LabNL with the Aprender Haciendo (Learning by Doing) workshop Té de anacahuita (Anacahuita Tea), a collective experiment with the Microteca, Fotovoz, and Autoconstructores communities.

Anacahuita is a tree native to northeastern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley, (like me) with white flowers with yellow centers and edible fruits, and it’s the emblematic flower of the state of Nuevo León.

Its rough leaves trap airborne pollutants and heavy metals, and it is traditionally attributed with medicinal properties for the respiratory system, which struck me as very powerful in a city going through a political struggle around air pollution.

Since we couldn’t secure a supplier that met a restaurant’s commercial standards to include it on MARCO’s menu, we took the question to LabNL, where each community joined in from its own interests.

The project included fieldwork in General Treviño and Icamole, interviews about the plant’s history, recipes, and medicinal uses, and two fermented-drink prototypes, one with wild yeasts and one with a kombucha starter.
ProtoPODCAST_Ep32:
Té de anacahuita: investigación colectiva desde el territorio

Wiki del proyecto






Visit to General Treviño, a municipality northeast of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area that the Autoconstructores team identified as a place with clean air, where the anacahuita trees would not be contaminated. We were welcomed into their home by the parents of Iris, one of the Fotovoz members, who had a huge anacahuita tree in their front yard.








Visit to Icamole, west of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area, home to the Capilla del Ánima de la Anacahuita (Chapel of the Soul of the Anacahuita).


















Three days of Aprender Haciendo (Learning by Doing) Té de Anacahuita, an event open to the public where we put everything we had learned into practice.
















Photography MARCO Menu: Michelle Lartigue
Photography Té de Anacahuita/LabNL: Documentation team at LabNL

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MTY, MX