Balseca investigates the exploitation of natural resources and labour in South America within both financial and cultural frames. He collaborates with communities whose histories reveal the effects of large-scale systems of colonial extraction. Filmed in the island of Santa Cruz in the Galápagos archipelago, a highly protected environment, this video work follows local artisan Segundo Teodoro Ruíz as he carves a self-portrait, commissioned by Balseca, in Spanish Cedar wood (Cedrela odorata), a species introduced to the islands. The resulting sculpture by Ruíz, who is originally from the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, points to the circulations of humans and other species and the inadequacy of scientific notions of uncontaminated nature and origin.