These sculptures, paintings, and drawings are part of a long-term project that began in 2019 to address urban biodiversity by envisioning fictitious public monuments to human and non-human interconnectedness. The objective of this project is to create a series of paintings and sculptures imagining memorials that decenter the human and engage in a radical reimagining of collective memory. This project is sited at All Faiths Cemetery in Queens, New York where I am engaging in non-human participatory research methods to develop a framework of understanding with which to enter a shared space with non-human individuals and communities. This work was created for Platform Gallery in 2021 https://www.platformgallery.com/april-spotlight-2021
Plant Communication Devices
2021
Sticks and artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, potting soil, Mugwort, Sagebrush, and Wormwood seeds with human DNA collected at burial site, stone from soil displaced by gravediggers, paper mache’, spray paint, insulation tape, wood, cardboard, recycled jars, water, leeks
32”h x 36”w x 12”d
The sculptures are small, serve as maquettes for the monuments, and are built in the style of religious reliquaries or icons. Like reliquaries, they are designed to serve both as a celebration of, and repositories for, physical remains, however they will hold seeds and other biological specimens collected from the cemetery instead of the remnants of human individuals
Body Map of All Faiths Cemetery
2021
Oil paint and graphite on hand-sewn canvas designed to folded
27" x 27"
The paintings are hand sewn, unstretched canvasses designed to be folded like maps. These image-maps are of fictional memorial sites depicting land as body-territory: a feminist conceptual premise that looks at the body as a continuum of the land.
Plant Communication Device #1
2021
Artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, stone from soil displaced by gravediggers, paper mache’, spray paint, wood, cardboard, recycled jars, water, leeks
29”h x 12”w x 12”d
This is a communication experiment with leeks grown from food waste. These leeks appear to be responding to shape suggestions put forth by the sculptural arms of the device.
Plant Communication Device #1
2021
Artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, stone from soil displaced by gravediggers, paper mache’, spray paint, wood, cardboard, recycled jars, water, leeks
29”h x 12”w x 12”d
As the leeks grow, the communication devices tracks the geometric points laid out by the plant-body spatial arrangement.
Plant Communication Device #2
2021
Sticks and artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, potting soil, Mugwort, Sagebrush, and Wormwood seeds with human DNA collected at burial site, insulation tape, wood, cardboard
32”h x 12”w x 12”d
This device contains soil and seeds collected during fieldwork onsite at All Faiths. When thinking about plant chemical communication and underground mycelial networks, it is not out of the question to speculate about the possibility of human remains being present in the bodies of plants at the burial sites. Reflectors are designed to enhance the light environment for new plants, and this object is designed to greet new seedlings as they arise.
Plant Communication and Guardian Devices
2021
Sticks and artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, potting soil, Sagebrush, and Wormwood plant from the Artemisia family with human DNA collected at burial site, pulp (from recycled carboard with plaster leaf clippings, and catnip), doll eyeballs, paper mâché, spray paint, insulation tape, wood, cardboard, grow light
48”h x 36”w x 18”d
This
Quiet Counrty, installation view
2021
Oil on unstretched handsewn canvas, Sticks and artificial flowers from All Faiths Cemetery, cement, potting soil, Sagebrush, and Wormwood plant from the Artemisia family with human DNA collected at burial site, pulp (from recycled carboard with plaster leaf clippings, and catnip), doll eyeballs, paper mâché, spray paint, insulation tape, wood, cardboard, grow light
Psychic Corporeal Map: We Are Coming
2021
Oil paint and graphite on handstitched canvas designed to folded
66” x 53”
The artwork produced by this project is a series of paintings and sculptures that reimagine monuments to celebrate interconnectedness. The paintings are large-scale, un-stretched canvasses designed to be folded like maps. These image-maps are of fictional memorial sites depicting land as body-territory, a feminist conceptual premise that looks at the body as a continuum of the land.