Transplant Field Guide

Text-based work in collaboration with Meech Boakye, 2023.
 

“Alienation is a two-faced thing: it hurts, and the freedom it gives is not
on our terms, but there is also the germ of liberation—we are offered the chance to relinquish any investment in a self-destructive society. The pain felt from our alienation can’t be alleviated by a return to an ethereal state of nature, but has to be embraced, and retooled.”
Sølvi Goard, Making and Getting Made: Towards a Cyborg Transfeminism. Salvage Magazine, 2017.

And perhaps this is exactly where we will meet the plants.

As part of our ongoing inquiry into complicating relationships with migrating plant species, Meech and I created a text for South Asian Visual Arts Centre’s (SAVAC) Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens. Transplant Field Guide engaged with six plants labelled as “invasive”, weaving histories, stories, recipes and meditations as an invitation to nurture kinship and imagine queer and anti-capitalist living. The printable text can be found here.

Public programming for this work included two walks along disturbed landscapes. One walk was hosted by artist Alize Zorlutuna along the West Toronto Railpath. The second was hosted by artist Vince Rozario alongside an artist talk following the screening of Jumana Manna’s film Foragers. More information about the walks can be found here and here.

Exhibition History
SAVAC: Ishtar’s Network of Feral Gardens. Curated by Vince Rozario.