The Plantation of the Mind
Installation (4 prints, audio piece)
with Maxime Benvenuto, Yassine Ben Abdallah, Michelle Lai
(Academic Project)
As seen through the lens of Marx’s metabolic rift, the plantation reproduces systems of exhaustion across planetary scales. From soil nutrient depletion to the creation of non-biodiverse ecosystems, these methods of exploitation have a tremendous effect on the environment that surrounds them. This impoverishment has also led to a disconnection between laborers and their own lands, undermining their own food sovereignty.
The Plantation of the Mind is an installation that borrows from the western gaze of the diorama, turning our eyes towards a set of four species of fungi that thrive on the sugar cane plantation. However, all these species are fictional, serving as a fable that retells the historical exploitation of human and non-human bodies across geographies and time. The four fungi — which stand for the voices of the water, the soil, the native vegetation and the native peoples — resist the deadening, deafening, sterilizing action of the cane, which represents a global, bureaucratic voice that grids the land according to western ideals of rationality and productivity.
The installation was selected for the Zero Hunger, Zero Power exhibition at Klokgebouw during Dutch Design Week ‘21.
Installation (4 prints, audio piece)
with Maxime Benvenuto, Yassine Ben Abdallah, Michelle Lai
(Academic Project)
As seen through the lens of Marx’s metabolic rift, the plantation reproduces systems of exhaustion across planetary scales. From soil nutrient depletion to the creation of non-biodiverse ecosystems, these methods of exploitation have a tremendous effect on the environment that surrounds them. This impoverishment has also led to a disconnection between laborers and their own lands, undermining their own food sovereignty.
The Plantation of the Mind is an installation that borrows from the western gaze of the diorama, turning our eyes towards a set of four species of fungi that thrive on the sugar cane plantation. However, all these species are fictional, serving as a fable that retells the historical exploitation of human and non-human bodies across geographies and time. The four fungi — which stand for the voices of the water, the soil, the native vegetation and the native peoples — resist the deadening, deafening, sterilizing action of the cane, which represents a global, bureaucratic voice that grids the land according to western ideals of rationality and productivity.
The installation was selected for the Zero Hunger, Zero Power exhibition at Klokgebouw during Dutch Design Week ‘21.
2021
![Second iteration of the installation at Dutch Design Week 2021.]()
![First iteration of the installation.]()
