Bittersweet 南蛇藤,
As an artist who works in the space of entanglements, this summer, returning to the east coast, I was drawn to a twisting climbing vine I would see along paths. I would learn the vine was the notorious Bittersweet that has so impacted the forest there. A berry I grew up making holiday wreaths out of, Bittersweet, is the western name for a climbing vine indigenous to China, Korea and Japan. Widely considered invasive in North America. Vilified locally these days, it was brought to New England as an ornamental plant. Its Chinese name translates to Southern Snake Vine, 南蛇藤.
It’s a smart plant. Thriving in a time of upheaval and mass-extinction.
I came to the residency hoping to make work that would support a non-human audience. Pulling this vine from the native trees seemed like work that would be of service to the community I was getting to know. Bittersweet indeed: To come to a place so full of life and to try to kill these “weeds” in the name of cultivating “life”. Bittwesweet. Thus, the pulled, entangled Bittersweet became both a metaphorical and physical framework for this work.
Inside the studio I kept the vine alive and used it as a scaffolding upon which 62 life sized drawings depicting the non-human life I encountered at the residency drawn on scraps of plastic were hung.
How do we navigate the complexities of altered lands. Of cultures. How do we honor the need to move. A need that is increasingly prevalent as the forces of climate change accelerate and amplify existing challenges and rifts. How do we honor the places that host niche cultures both human and non-human and work to maintain those. How do we hold complexity? I have read that events of “whole gene duplication”, a random mutation event that is usually detrimental for survival may be common in the genetic legacy of invasive plants, and is potentially a response to the trauma of periods of prior mass extinction. How do we learn to know, collectively and individually, when a trauma response is detrimental to a diverse world and when it is necessary for collective survival?