“tangle of twilight” is best viewed on desktop.
what didn’t you do to bury me
but you forgot that i was a seed
Dinos Christianopoulos
Spirit in the Land—organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum of American Art—delves into the intricacies of humanity’s relationship to the natural environment. Featuring thirty artists, the exhibition alludes to the historic legacies of many communities that have been harmed by colonial systems of destruction, including the Gullah Geechee of the Sea Islands, the Maroons of Mauritius, and the Houma Nation of Yakni Chitto. Yet, members of the very communities that have been brutalized as a direct consequence of imperialism, settler colonialism, and other dispossessing forces are the knowledge-bearers and sharers who work spiritedly to repair homelands, restore resources, and resist ongoing extraction.
Featured in the exhibition is Wangechi Mutu’s Subterranea Flourish (2021), in which the artist depicts soul as seed, illustrating humanity’s natural capacity for rebirth. Viewers witness the fluorescent body’s germination and sprouting, tentacle-like roots, dotted with what could be nourishing mycorrhizae. These rhizomes proliferate in fertile soil, burgeoning with dark, lush leaves and ripe, yellow blossoms that stretch out towards the painting’s crest.
How distant is our common ancestor from plant or fungi? What could change if we cultivated community like a scuppernong vine—precious about the collective fruit, respectful of each other’s desire for repose, curious about our shared gestation? As we surrender to late spring, I invite you to consider the people who are blooming beside you: waiting at the traffic light, cradled in your arms, sitting on the other side of a window screen. Each of us tangled in twilight. Sweet, swelling subaltern, may our roots mingle and magnify as we grow wild along the riverbeds.
Because if roots can fly, can’t we as well?
— Bryn Evans
Spirit in the Land is on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University through July 9, 2023.
