1st Edition
Flora Fantastic From Orchidelirium to Eco-Critical Contemporary Art
This project delves deep into colonial botany, utilizing mediums such as historical investigation, cinema, photography, live performance, and installation art.
Surveying perspectives from Europe, the U.S., Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, it positions plants—both native and foreign—as active participants and silent observers in colonial narratives. By viewing through the prism of visual and performance art, this book touches on diverse topics like the economic value of plants, traditional and Western medicine, state-endorsed scientific endeavours, migration patterns of flora and people, bio-contact areas, nationalistic views, and botanical diplomacy. It offers fresh insights into colonial botany's multifaceted history, emphasizing the intricate interplay between Eastern, Western, and Southern nations during the 20th century and its enduring impact today.
Serving as an invaluable addition to the realms of art history, performance studies, botany, visual culture, decolonial initiatives, and environmental politics, this book arrives at a pivotal moment when its insights are most crucial.
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Flora Fantastic. An Introduction
Corina L. Apostol and Tashima Thomas
Part I, Colonial Legacies and Natural Intersections: Critical Perspectives on Culture, Nature, and Identity
Chapter 2. A Ripening Injury
Michael Marder
Chapter 3. Estonians, Orchids, and Exotic Others: Baltic Colonial Entanglements Revisited
Ulrike Plath
Chapter 4. Against ‘Orchidelirium’ and ‘Pornotropics’: Indonesian Artists on the Coloniality of Nature, Gender, and Race
Sadiah Boonstra
Chapter 5. Propagated in Obscurity: Bermuda Grass and Rhizomatic Queerness
C.C. McKee and Jamison Edgar
Chapter 6. Scores for the Sensitive
Dennis Dizon
Part II, Botanical Narratives: Art, Ecology, and Postcolonial Reflections
Chapter 7. Botanical Timeline
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 8. Addressing Erasures and Imagining Resistance: On Working with Colonialism and Memory, Environment and Extractivism in the Age of Crisis
Kristina Norman and Linda Kaljundi
Chapter 9. Unmasking the Palm Oil Paradox: Elia Nurvista's 'Long Hanging Fruits'
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 10. Gardening in the Beautiful ‘Wake’ of Empire in the work of Ebony G. Patterson at New York Botanical Gardens
Tashima Thomas
Chapter 11. From Soil to Subversion: The Artistic Alchemy of Nikita Kadan
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 12. Unearthing the Blind Spots of Botanical History: An Exploration of Uriel Orlow's 'Theatrum Botanicum'
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 13. Red Forests, Table Manners: Zina Saro-Wiwa's Artistic Reclamation of Ecological and Cultural Identity
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 14. Interlacing Roots and Feminine Forms: Wangechi Mutu's Ecological Reflections on Hybridity and Transformation
Corina L. Apostol
Chapter 15. Botanical Monstrosity and Kincentric Ecologies in the Work of Firelei Báez
Tashima Thomas
Glossary of Botanical Terms
Corina L. Apostol and Tashima Thomas
Index
Biographies
Biography
Corina L. Apostol is an art historian, curator, and artist, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Tashima Thomas is Visiting Assistant Professor of History of Art and Design at the Pratt Institute, USA.
