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"Home": Plants and Plotting


Title: Home
Medium/Media: Ficus Bonsai tree, vinyl, wire, coconut fiber and burlap installation.
Year: 2017
Artist: Julian Zwack

Artist Statement:
“Home” is mixed media durational installation piece that allows us to perceive the world in which we live and question the relationship between humans and  our environment.
The piece’s intent is to discuss that all human “spaces” we consider “places” or as a “home” (places we have an emotional attachment to) all fall under the umbrella of our planet.
That all countries despite their differences, feuds and geographic location are interconnected in one system with wilderness.
The piece also discusses ideas of mutual responsibility, the bonsai tree symbolising wilderness supports the countries on it’s leaves and hence provides life for all of humanity. While the burlap (used to plant/protect  trees) represents humanity responsibility to live sustainably and care for the planet.
Together they demonstrate the inseparability of humans from wilderness and that all peoples stand on the same soil here on Earth our common “home”.
Extended Artist Statement:
The title originates from Tolly Bradford’s idea of “home” in Home Away from Home (Prairie Forum 29, no.1 (2004): p. 25-44), where he discusses how people view a space as home and develop an emotional attachment to it by comparing a Sisika leader to a European colonialist trader. Home was visually inspired by the tale of the baobab trees in the book “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry where african baobab trees are space weeds that take root on small plants growing until they become so large that they destroy the planet.
The conceptual element for this piece comes from Dean Miller’s The place of all things which defines and categories areas of earth as “space”: e.g. a coordinate on earth, and “place”: e.g. a romantic relationship to space. These terms coined first  by Yi-Fu Tuan’s as organisational tools for locations (Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. 1 ed., Minnesota, University of Minnesota, 2001. Web. 10/27/2017).
The piece is also inspired by William Cronon’s: The Trouble with Wilderness, an essay that dissects the the Western world’s perception of wilderness, as a construct where humans are not a part of wilderness and in turn separated from environmental issues.
Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature." The Great New Wilderness Debate. Eds. Callicott, J. Baird and Michael P. Nelson. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1998. 471-99. Print. (originally published in Environmental History 1.1 (1996): 7-28. Print.)

Other Images from show:
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C:\Users\Renault\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\IMG_20171031_131914.jpg

C:\Users\Renault\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\IMG_20171031_131938.jpg


Show Curatorial Statement:
The Quotation I selected  for this show was:
“We need to discover a common middle ground in which all of these things, from the city to the wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word “home.”
-William Cronon
Piece Curatorial Rationale:


This piece demonstrates the quote by representing that both the city/country (vinyl covered leaves) are encompassed within wilderness (bonsai tree) to form a single entity that Cronon calls “home”. The artwork also speaks to Cronon’s ideas of perceiving wilderness and our placement within it through the designation of the world's countries on the tree’s leaves, inter-dispersed among one another to form a disorganised and unrecognizable map of the human world that is only made sense through its physical attachment/connection to nature/wilderness. Finally the piece illustrates the environmental sentiment of the quote as humankind is illustrated as being entrusted with living sustainably in a system where mankind acknowledges wilderness not only a provider but also the place in which they exist as their home.

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