(Un)natural?

I once picked a lovely little flower that had pushed its way all the way up between two tiles, yellow head supported by small green leaves, a strong slightly prickly stem. I just had to pick it, carefully carried it several miles home, only to be told it was a weed, therefore not pretty.

I once comforted a teenage girl, she was crying, distraught but also angry, she was stigmatized because she was overweight. My hands gently caressed her back, reassuring her that she was good enough as she was, only to be met with disgust, because my very hands were disgusting, disgusting lesbian hands, therefore not useful.

(U)natural? is a series about the rules we create and the ways we categorize and keep order.

Order in the world,

order in systems,

people in boxes,

plants in categories,

red and green light, please move on.

If you fit in, you are welcome everywhere, if you don’t, you must forever twist like a stubborn ivy.

I have imprisoned a Hemp/Cannabis plant and a Poppy/Opium plant in an iron frame, should they be in the healing box, the criminal, the power-hungry, the greedy? You decide whether the grid should be kept open or whether it should be closed.

I have visualized the patient Aspidistra plant spreading in its most beautiful bloom in a sunset among other wild growths. I have set it free from the smoke in dark living rooms and out into the nature. Aspidistra has traveled from the meditative surroundings of the Himalayas in the east to boring living rooms in the west, and people are excited about how unusually tolerant it is towards smoke, temperature changes and simple oblivion.

They have travelled a long way these plants, and they go far and they go wide, distributed, traded, they may end up in your hands, they may not. They grow at night, maybe because they don't want to grow when we look? They grow, they bloom, they sow themselves, they wither, they die, that's their nature. What’s your nature? Are you natural? Do you fit into the circle?

My garden is full of weeds and I thrive.