Plant Babies
A exhibition concept portraying stories set in an imagined future or alternate present
Faculty Lead:
Laura Forlano
Class:
Critical Contexts
Student:
Jiani Sapathy
“Social themes are often easier to couch in metaphor and analogy. Visual representations of these analogies often trigger visceral responses that are stronger than frameworks and papers. Pairing these skills provide a useful toolkit for beginning conversations about social change. ”
The Plant Babies exhibition concept tells stories about relating in significant otherness, showing the joint lives of humans and common houseplants in an imagined future or alternate present.
Using Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto as inspiration, this exhibition seeks to show how an ethics that is committed to the flourishing of significant otherness would be demonstrated in a single-person apartment in the future or the near future of an alternate present. This apartment belongs in a culture in which house plants are considered to be a companion species. The exhibit shows glimpses into multiple perspectives of the plant companionship, including perspectives that disregard significant otherness by “humanizing” or personifying houseplants in order to reduce their “otherness”.
Experimental and controversial genetic enhancement of houseplants (left) that includes splicing of human genes to make plants more “human-like” through human-like skin, eyes and mouths is being contested by Houseplant Rights Advocates. These Designer Houseplants are often owned and promoted by celebrity plant moms.
Communication between humans and their houseplants (right) is considered to be possible, with the understanding that plants simply respond to stimuli and communicate at a much slower rate than humans. Tools to bridge the gap between these rates are common.
From left: PlantBaby Monitor [for sped up playback of plant responses], plant pet collar, Plant care books