The Perfect Specimen

My work explores the dynamic relationships between human representation and the natural world. This investigation, as seen in the artwork ‘The perfect Specimen’ has a broad scope that includes cultural practices and methodologies around specimen collection, the preservation and presentation of these materials in museums and collections, trade in natural objects, the relationship of botany to colonial expansion, as well as the role of conservationism in contemporary thinking. Within, The collection ‘Resemblances’ the areas of concern include, an investigation of symbolism and metaphors that are bound up in contemporary exchanges with nature. Here, I explore the reconfiguration of nature in human thought through cultures of plant cultivation, including genetic engineering, floriculture as it has related to women in a western context, decorative symbols of nature, in particular the acanthus as it has been used as a symbol of regeneration and decay, the collection of nature and locating of narrative within these objects through museological strategies of display, as well as the social ordering of people in relation to nature in western thinking.