A glass terrarium filled with living plants, seeds, dirt, rocks, and man-made remnants, including trash, building materials, asphalt/concrete, food. It is an enclosed ecosystem exploring how the contemporary state of the 'natural' world is forced to coexist with the man-made. Both are presented as organisms which grow and/or decay. It is presented in a terrarium to highlight the existence as spectacle, something alien, which is separate from the viewer via the glass. This functions to bring attention to the irony of putting this ‘mundane’ scene into a gallery space to be viewed as ‘art’, when the living artifacts are all around us all the time, mostly remaining unnoticed in our day-to-day activity. However, this world between the pavement remains an influence on our physical world as well as our psyche/ unconscious. The two worlds of seemingly autonomous nature and human residue can no longer be seen as naturally opposing or separate—no longer parallel. A dejected dimension, yet akin to the ecotone, where two ecosystems meet at their edges, giving rise to unconventional diversity and interaction. This space is a global ecosystem in itself.
This piece is inherently a time-based piece, as physiological changes will occur—namely growth and decay, birth and death, but also mutations, and possibly a variety of other mysterious dynamics. Ultimately, this set-up presents organisms normally understood to be at odds, forced into a confined, alienated space. On the one hand it is survival of the fittest, on the other it is about a dialectic between organisms. The man-made materials are living in that they interact with what is around them, are symbols, signifiers, and remnants of human creation/consumption, embodying the greater organism at work: humankind. This work is initially set-up with the hand of the artist (human), and then is left almost entirely to its own devices, self-contained with the exception of light (water will not be added during this exhibition). Within the gallery space, the plants cannot exist long without additional light—thus the interference of the florescent tube. The human is essentially the catalyst of this growing global ecosystem, which is on the fringes of society and the wilderness—the in between space, the fringes of consciousness of our very existence.
Celeste M. Evans
