Why Dead Plants? This work was done during a November 2014 artist residency at BigCI (otherwise known as Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives). BigCI is located at the edge of the Wollemi National Park (part of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in Australia). I was told that this part of the world has the largest variety of flora in the world after the Amazon Basin. I would walk for hours in the “bush” (Australian for forest) soaking in the natural beauty of the area, often stopping to sit on a rock to sketch or write something in my sketchbook. On one of these walks, some dead plants wedged between tall grass and shrubs caught my eye. They just lay there almost invisible amongst the amazing vegetation that grew all around them. Fascinated by their fragile unique beauty I took them back to the studio and started studying them through drawing. After that day, every time I was outdoors I started noticing more and more of the dead plants. Their woody rhythmic shapes, the forms of their leaves, pods and branches all fascinated me. The very fact that I often trod on them as I navigated my way through the bush brought home the humility and fate of these amazing creations of nature. Every walk ended with me bringing more of these plants back to the studio. I laid them out before me on the floor and the tables and suspended them in the air. I wanted to see them in their uniqueness –freeing the forms from the clutter of an abundant forest. Cycles of Life Working in this way I pondered the ultimate destiny of my dead plants- to be absorbed back into the earth from which they had grown. Yet in their ceasing to exist they would provide nourishment to the next generation of forest undergrowth and even the tall trees of the bush. The nature of life is cyclical whether it is plants or humans. I thought of the floral veils that are used to decorate a bridal home in India. The fragrance and colour of the flowers are intrinsic to the bridal festivities. Yet on the day after the wedding when the bride leaves her parent’s home and goes to her husband’s house these flowers are already wilting. As the floral veil is taken down to be thrown away there is a melancholy associated with the act of saying adieu to a daughter or sister. But even in the midst of this sorrow one looks forward to happier events around the corner as she embarks upon a new life. Influenced by memories of floral veils, the work took on the form of a veil. The Urban Veil One of the dictionary definitions of a veil is “something that conceals, separates or screens”. A city dweller often views the natural world on a handphone, a computer or the television. Even when we get closer there is often a camera lens or a car window that separates us from nature. All these “screens” conceal from us our connection to the natural world. How often are we able to enter into natural surroundings and know ourselves again as a part of it? | |
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City life today is lived largely indoors with a lot of involvement in "non-physical worlds". By non-physical worlds I mean the worlds we enter when watching television, working on the computer, browsing the internet or talking on the phone. Rebecca Solnit calls this an “excess of interiority”. By this she means that we are losing contact with the physical world outside of the worlds created by the gadgets in our homes and offices. This loss of contact in turn results in an obliteration of our relation to our material origins and even to our own bodies. We no longer experience our own body as a natural system integrated with other natural systems. For example, our morning coffee is consumed without a thought to the myriad natural processes that go into the making of each cup (where the bean was grown, the weather, the soil, where the milk, sugar, water comes from, and so forth). Our inability to see our life in connection to these processes makes the cup of coffee a potent representation of how nature is absent from our awareness. Experiencing substance as a way of connecting with natural origins Some artists, instead of using scenes as reminders of nature, use substance as the bearer of meaning. Celebrating the physicality of substance unravels alienation from the natural world. One of my favourite examples is Walter de Maria’s Earth Room (1977, earth, Dia Art Foundation, New York). It is made up of 250 cubic yards of earth (197 cubic meters) 3,600 square feet of floor space (335 square meters) 22 inch depth of material (56 centimeters) Total weight of sculpture: 280,000 lbs. (127,300 kilos) . The New York Earth Room has been on long-term view to the public since 1980. This work was commissioned and is maintained by Dia Art Foundation. It is a reminder that earth is the substance that has been hidden by urbanization and washed away by modern sanitation. For many city dwellers ideas about nature come from video footage in blockbuster movies and calendar photographs. They imagine a place that is pristine and virgin, something that will be defiled if it comes in contact with human presence. Venturing out of urban sites, some may experience disappointment that the countryside is not always the picture perfect idyll they have been led to expect.
The Earth Room, made up of a huge quantity of mud, requires constant tending and replacement to keep it moist yet not growing fungus, etc. Its power lies in the tension between the repulsion we feel for dirt and the pedestal we put art on. At a deeper level earth bears connotations of fertility and decay- aspects of life and death that technological advancement can influence only to a limited extent. It reminds us that our bodies will return to the earth when we die- to the very dirt that we shun during our lifetime. Works such as these remind us that nature is not just a pretty picture to be looked at. It is also more than a life support system. It is that from which our very existence springs and into which it will be absorbed. |
AuthorNandita Mukand is a Singapore-based artist. Her work deals with the relationship with Nature and spirituality from within the contemporary urban context. She employs materiality to question the impact urban life has on our experience of time and the meaning we give to our own existence. Archives
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