A landscape longed for: the garden as disturbance
November 20, 2021 - February 05, 2022
Locust Projects (Miami, FL)
Featuring Andrea Bowers, Sandi Haber Fifield, David Hartt, Jim Hodges, Ebony G. Patterson, and Onajide Shabaka and newly commissioned works by Ema Ri and Cristina Lei Rodriguez, A landscape longed for: the garden as disturbance explores the motif of the garden as used by artists in its relation to the cultivation and expression of beauty and knowledge. The works in the exhibition function around images and objects connected to and derived from the study of plants, prompting a reimagining and reinterpretation of the garden as a site for the lyrical arrangement of forms.
As the title suggests, within the implementation of order, there exist tendencies towards disruption and anticipation that challenge and inform our sense of worldbuilding. In the way that the “world cannot be left out of the garden,” the exhibition considers how the garden operates on the imaginary, attending to our needs and emotions, stimulating the senses, staging instances of joy, and insisting on living well as liberation.
“...we cultivate the spaces of contemplation, a garden of plants not necessary for physical survival. The awareness of that fact is what gives the garden its special, powerful place in our lives and our imaginations.”
— Jamaica Kincaid, The Disturbances of the Garden