A landscape longed for: the garden as disturbance
March 1, 2024 — April 20, 2024
Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, Flagler College (St. Augustine, FL)
Exhibition catalogue coming soon!
A landscape longed for: The garden as disturbance takes inspiration from the writings of Jamaica Kincaid. Kincaid, a gardener and lay horticulturist, wrote lovingly about the modalities felt within her garden – frustrations and disturbances accompanied by joy and amazement. Despite the planning, plotting, and formulating that are implemented, Kincaid is aware that nature cannot be fully contained or controlled. It disturbs the best-laid plans and forces us to adapt and to be responsive to the unknown, to continually envision and hope for a better future.
The exhibit features the works of Laura Castro, Carolina Casusol, Sandi Haber Fifield, David Hartt, Mark Fleuridor, Candice Lin, Cathy Lu, Lee Mary Manning, Ana Mendieta, Reginald O’Neal, Ebony Patterson, Ema Ri, Onajide Shabaka and Kandis Williams. The artists consider the intricacies of the garden as a metaphor for the larger world, using it as a framework to consider cultural, social, political, geographical, and historical issues.
“As the exhibition title suggests, any implementation of order in the garden, as in life, is met with inevitable disruptions and challenges—reminders of the tensions between control and wildness, cultivation and intrusion. We sought to challenge conventional associations of gardens as spaces of leisure, tranquility, and pleasure. Instead, works in the exhibition whether conceptually, materially, or both, mirrored the garden as a space of disturbance—one shaped by forces of resistance and renewal.”
Select Press
Number:Inc
A landscape longed for: the garden as disturbance, now showing at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum
By: Maggie Trela
Burnaway
A landscape longed for: the garden as disturbance at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, St. Augustine
By: Christopher Stephen