BOTANICAL CAGE AND PERIMETER WALL, 2018
Photography: Etienne Frossard
Botanical Cage and Perimeter Wall, 2018, copper, wood, steel, concrete, ceramic, 5 x 16 x 12 ft.
Hunter College, 205 Hudson Gallery, New York, NY (April-May 2018)
https://www.huntermfastudio.org/mfa-thesis-exhibitions/spring-2018/rachelle-dang
Press and Publications:
Hyperallergic, “Laughter and Tears in Hunter College’s MFA Thesis Show (Zachary Small, May 2018)
https://hyperallergic.com/444514/hunter-college-2018-mfa-thesis-exhibition/
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/332/
I located a reproduction of a 1774 “blueprint” by the British naturalist John Ellis, who invented and promoted a cabinet-sized apparatus to transport living breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to England over a one-year ocean voyage. I reconstructed the shipping carrier, sheathed it in copper patinated with salt, sulfur, and vinegar, and placed it at the center of my installation, Botanical Cage and Perimeter Wall. Polynesian breadfruit was a desirable and valuable research specimen sought after by naturalists at the Royal Society, including Jospeh Banks, who were determined to realize the imperial mission of cultivating breadfruit in the Caribbean. British shareholders and investors in the slave plantation economy of Jamaica and other colonies demanded solutions that would buttress plantation profits, provide a fast-growing food crop for enslaved laborers, and prevent further losses caused by the environmental catastrophe of monocropping sugar, particularly famine-related mortality in the enslaved population in the aftermath of hurricanes and island-wide deforestation for cash crops, boiling mills, and timber. By the late 18th century, the British were successful at uprooting 2,000 breadfruit saplings from Tahiti and hundreds of other economically-useful or exotic species and transporting these living plants to Jamaica, St. Vincent, and to London for further research and eventual dissemination across colonial territories. One of the plants that may have arrived in the British Caribbean colonies with the Tahitian breadfruit shipment (part of William Bligh’s second attempt with the HMS Providence in 1791-1793) is “Tahitian cane” or “Bourbon cane” – a far more productive and robust cane that would replace the “old world cane” in the Caribbean and serve as the parent species to today’s high-yield hybrid cultivars. My rebuilt cabinet appears as an embellished prison or cage. I wanted to use materiality and the relationship to the body to provoke expanded readings about violence, slavery and labor, and the ecological legacies of colonialism in both Polynesia and the Caribbean. The cast and manipulated breadfruit forms appear at different stages of ripeness, decay, or rot; they convey ideas of consumption, waste, and ecological processes.
Thank you to the many people who have discussed this project and its research with me, from its inception in 2016 and its completion in 2018, and over the years since that formative time. My thanks to the scholars, scientists, and historians who have developed and published research related to colonial botany and the breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). I am grateful to my MFA thesis advisor, Nari Ward, and the MFA faculty at Hunter College for supporting this project, and I thank my MFA colleague Christopher Roberson for wood fabrication and carpentry.
BREADFRUIT (`ULU)
BOTANICAL CAGE AND PERIMETER WALL
CHORUS
COUROUPITA/CORPUS
DIVER CHAIN
DIVERS
HOUSE ON CANNONBALL STREET
LODESTAR
SEED BOX: TREES OF NEW YORK
SOUTHERN OCEANS
UNDER A CONSTELLATION OF LEAVES
ADDITIONAL WORK
PRESS
STATEMENT & CONTACT INFO
CV