Gardens are autobiographical territories- relentlessly co-authored by constantly evolving communities of gardeners, some equipped with spades, others with claws and some more endowed with long roots. In collaboration with the soil, this process of coauthoring results in open ended narratives that emerge and dissolve, leaving behind traces of minerals and decomposing matter.
It might not be inappropriate to state that today, gardens in contemporary art have become more than a new genre-their unstoppable and over evolving fluidity a challenge to the austerity and fetishization of purity and timelessness that has characterized our western museums for many centuries.
This current issue of Antennae and the two that will follow are dedicated to gardening as a creative process. Gardens are the new open-sky museums: outdoors, accessible, generous, and always a diverse multitude at once. They might just cradle new forms of art that our future truly needs.
Featuring the work of Nura Mohammedata Beshir Sylvia Grace Borda Rosie Carr Patrick Costello Elisabeth Dzuricsko Elysia French Clare Fuery-Jones Maggie Groat Tyler Kirkholm Julian Lucas Keepa Maskey Jessica Mueller Dao Nguyen Anna Reckin Kris Schaedig Areeya Tivasuradej Lynn Turner