The exhibit Botany of Colonization will be up through November in the Sheila Aronson Gallery on the New School Campus and a number of related events including Tuesday noon readings and walks around town are listed below and will be continually updated
As part of the Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics 2016-2018, and as an extension of the exhibition Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York–A Botany of Colonization, the weekly events announced below seek to explore the connection between Maria Thereza Alves’ work and the New York City landscape.
The weekly Weed Walks are presented in neighborhoods of the center’s partner organizations where ballast flora gardens will sprout in the spring of 2018.
Sunday, November 5, 12–2 PM
Volunteer plants penetrate ruderal landscapes, thriving under the harsh conditions of poor soil and post-industrial waste. These spontaneous plants blanket spaces of transition by creeping into slivers of dirt, emerging year after year, far from their places of origin. Wild plants are often coded as threatening, labeled “weeds” or “invasive” but are also opportunists. They are doing the work of queering the urban landscape. Join Horticultural Advisor Marisa Prefer on a weed walk exploring the Western Rail Yards of the High Line, where gardeners have left “existing self-seeded plantings, celebrating the urban landscape that emerged on the High Line after the trains stopped running in 1980”.
Space is limited, please email vlc@newschool.edu to register for the walk.
Lunchtime Readings at The New School
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center,
Parsons School of Design
66 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
The five Lunchtime Readings that take place biweekly in the context of the exhibition elaborate the narratives, metaphors, and relationships Alves raises in her work. Organized in collaboration with Melanie Kress, Jasmin and Andi Pettis, and Eric Rodriguez at The High Line, these readings draw on a community of elected affinities responding to the exhibition Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York–A Botany of Colonization, as they look to the future it promises in the spring of 2018 when the plants are re-sited in ballast flora gardens around New York, including the forthcoming installation at The High Line.
Tuesday, NOVEMBER 7, 12:30–2 PM
with Wendy S. Walters, poet and Associate Dean, Parsons School of Design
Organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics
Thursday, NOVEMBER 9, 12:30–2 PM
with writer and scholar Patricia Klindienst
Guest curated by The High Line