With European colonial expansion the urge for control of “nature” arose.

Colonization brought with it the extermination of native plants, animals and peoples.

The vision of colonization can be traced back to the biblical garden of Eden. With the Fall of the white man, he lost not only his innocence, but also his knowledge of the natural world. The colonizer saw in contemporary European territorial expansion the possibility of a restitution and reinvestment of the white man in the sovereignty and power he had in his first state of being. One way of maintaining that absolute power was to record and categorize flora, fauna and original inhabitants through botanical drawings. For which knowledge from local residents was used, but who never received recognition. Naming in Latin is another form of erasure because it also ignores the original names of Flora and Fauna, given by indigenous people. Paradise Lost disrupts a botanical archive by omitting the Latin names and translating statements of indigenous activists who fight for the preservation of their habitats into Latin. Nearly 2,000 activists have been murdered in the past decade. Paradise Lost honors their struggle.