Orchid Unknown

Artwork/Journal article, including text, photographs and drawings.
Abstract:
The focus on plant/human relations, between scientific study and popular culture, allows for a consideration of the othering of nature in documentary and fictional storytelling. The narrative weaves factual accounts and fictional speculation to connect a group of detailed orchid models to a collection of miscellaneous reports related to economic botany and global colonial networks. The use of models allows for a focus on nature’s aesthetic value as an anthropocentric trait, embedded in the orchid’s commodified social and cultural value. Transformative acts aim to address broader implications of the distinction between ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ and complications arising from separating human and non-human activity.
Drawings produced in collaboration with botanical illustrator Lucy T. Smith
Published in Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Issue 69 - Spring 2026 - Realisms.