Weeds in Art: Growing in the Shadow of Power

The least celebrated plants in mainstream culture, those that are often despised as weeds, have recently become political symbols of resilience for marginalized and oppressed minority groups.
Weeds are symbolically charged like no other category of plants. It is because they are ontologically defined by the economies of human geographies that they have more recently infiltrated contemporary art. In this context, the anthropomorphic value essential to weed symbolism is brought to the fore more explicitly and sometimes disturbingly so. Conflict, in the new millennium, is more than ever grounded in new conceptions of territory, invasion, and appropriation-quantities that are magnified and often distorted by social media. It is therefore not a surprise that the complex anthropomorphism that weeds inscribe powerfully resounds with developments in the European migrant crisis, the waves of the diasporas in the Middle East, and the illegal immigration issues in the US, just to name a few. In short, the weed is always the Other-the Other which simultaneously threatens and constructs the self, the one which is and isn’t, the relative absolute referent which instils a very specific kind of anxiety related to transience, temporality, and corruption.
For these reasons, more recently, wild plants have cast this villain as an uncelebrated symbol of resistance-the weed resists capitalism by refusing to comply with aesthetic standards and economic values.
This talk explores the resilience of weeds in contemporary art through the work of Jin Lee, Zachari Logan, Mona Caron, and Precious Okoyomon.