Subliminal Annexation

Subliminal Annexation, 2023

bindweed roots, paverpol, frames, soil

dimensions variable

Exhibited in Gravitropic at Redline Contemporary Art Center, Denver

Curated by Christina Linden

As I dug deep in my raised beds, I became fascinated by the looping shapes of the rhizomic roots I pulled, akin to patterns I had used in previous bodies of work. While the visual patterns are easy to see, the metaphorical patterns run deeper, as deep as Convolvulus Arvensis, also known as Field Bindweed, can burrow. It sprouted from seeds brought by the first colonizers to plant the lawns that Europeans used to signal power and domination over nature, lawns cultivated by enslaved people for aesthetics as opposed to sustenance. As any gardener can tell you, bindweed chokes out everything else and is nearly impossible to eradicate. Environmental historian Alfred Crosby noted that this destruction of native plant species was “directly tied to the forced and brutal removal of Indigenous people from the land.”[1]. 

This installation contains the result of two summer’s worth of extraditing these destructive forms from deep under the soil and composing them into closed systems. It reminds us that we are on stolen land, constantly surrounded by the noxious traces of our history, and of the traces of labor required to eradicate the roots— - both literally and figuratively— - of environmental imperialism and white supremacy.