EARTH VOICE: PLANT BLINDNESS, MAGIC, AND ART
Colombian-born Australian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso works with vegetal elements. One of her public art installations draws upon 19th-century traditions of scientific observation, whilst also engaging with the conatus and agency of the bottle tree. This paper proposes that Cardoso’s ‘magical’ planting of bottle trees creates a circle of discourse regarding pre-human earth life, whilst gesturing towards speculations on post-human earth life. If we could hear the voices of the bottle trees, would they be a mournful weeping for lost habitats, or instead could they be an incantation for unknown futures? This research draws upon the dual cultures of both the artist and the bottle tree, to present a new way of listening to the earth.
Text by Prudence Gibson
Images by Maria Fernanda Cardoso
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ANTENNAE ISSUE 53
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