Plant Patriotism

Workshop

Scheck Family Education Terrace, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd | Transportation Options

This discussion will investigate the disparity between the appropriation of plants for purposes of political symbolism and their biological and more-than-human existence. How have contemporary artists illuminated the instrumentalization of vegetal life in nationalist ideology, including the imposition of fascist notions of racial purity onto plant varieties? In what ways has the spurious distinction between native plants and invasive species been mobilised in opposition to the deracinating forces of globalisation? To what extent do populist avowals of admiration for the cherished vegetation of the homeland mask extractivist attitudes to the natural environment? And what do plants have to say about attachment to place, slow mobility and planetary timespans?

Dr. Maja Fowkes and Dr. Reuben Fowkes are art historians, curators and co-directors of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, an independent research platform focussing on the art history of Central Europe and contemporary ecological practices. Recent and forthcoming publications include a co-authored book on Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (2019), Maja Fowkes’s The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde and Ecology under Socialism (2015) and a special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (July 2018). They have recently contributed chapters to Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (2018), Doublespeech: Hungarian Art of the 1960s and 1970s (2018) and Extending the Dialogue(2017). Their curatorial projects include the Anthropocene Experimental Reading Room, the Danube River School, and they are also founding members of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Central European University Budapest. They are currently leading a collective research project entitled Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History based at the University College London and supported by the Getty Foundation.