Wall text excerpt
The three pieces included in “Seeing Truth” engage photos from dormant and growing seasons at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, an institution that began as Louis XIII’s personal medicinal garden; became a scientific and botanical research center in the eighteenth century; and remains part of the intertwined histories of Western science, colonial appropriation, and trade. In other words, it is/was a key player in the transportation, classification, and separation of plants, humans, and other creatures. In that space, my eye was drawn to educational diagrams of clades, and to the shapes of drains, concrete flower beds, and manmade ponds, as well as to vegetal matter.
My process involved creating multiples; positioning and re-photographing prints (outdoors, and in my studio on floral patterned rugs, which were historically conceived of as indoor gardens); combining printed images with live and dried flowers; working continually with color—both digitally and by painting and drawing directly on prints—to build layers of possibility. Color for me is itself animate, and in complex conversation with the histories of botany, medicine, human violence, and the pursuit of beauty.
Natural, General, and Peculiar History, “34” x 25”, 2018, archival photo print on aluminum
Plant Messengers, “16” x 12”, 2019, archival photo print on wood
The Garden Politic, “16” x 12”, 2018, archival photo print on wood
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