Every Fertile Inch
'Every Fertile Inch' looks to nature to reveal queer pasts. Noting how queers have historically sewn tales onto flora and fauna to subvert oppression and prejudice. And later, as an act of pride.
The dutch ‘kruisen’ (root of the English word ‘cruising), also means “to breed” or “to arrange the mating of specific plants or animals” [A. Espinoza].
Grafting is a horticultural technique whereby tissues of plants are joined so as to continue their growth together.
Throughout history, “Desire leaves no archeological trace.” [R.B. Parkinson]. History itself is often at best a record of the experiences of powerful men of a particular typology. Untold histories, therefor are often imbued into cultural artefacts uncommon to the traditional historic method.
John Berger describes anthropology as “concerned with the passage from nature to culture…”. Nature; botanic and floral motifs therefore work as one of our most consistent artifice through which we can uncover untold truths and pasts. Objects where fringed narratives have been adorned onto.
Derek Jarman wrote of a garden that could prepare for what’s to come whilst reflecting on what’s already been. This place he curated addresses a moment in time, whilst observing its position in the fabric of the past and future.
A place to both mourn the loss of and espy the germination of life. He sewed heritage of our pasts into the beds of this garden. It’s in this nature that we can find prospect, passed through time. Where we can give thanks and sew for another day. He imbues nature - the thing we cannot escape - with all that we are missing. He grafts untold pasts to something that has and will always exist. He queers nature.
“The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end.”
Many have found themselves and been found within this very same nature.
Nature somehow feels to connect our past and presents. A paradise left to us through the art of a battlefield. Like laying flowers and going for ice-cream.
It’s funny that the same nature that birthed us, the same one what was used to testify our unnatural existence, is the place where we were made to adjoin, like vines grasping at each other. Now, eyes locking like sticky jam on the fruit that once cast us from Eden.
“Do you know where you are?”
I said: “Yes”.
Steel, copper, concrete, aggregate, ceramic, bio-plastic, mineral resin, pigment, light fixture
2023
shown as part of ‘At the Edge of Everything’ at Cabin, Berlin
