Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures (2021-22)
Recently exhibited at:
“Human Resources: Creativity as Renewable Energy in a Time of Scarcity” at the Lethaby Gallery as a part of the London Design Festival 2022, for its 20th anniversary!
'Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures (2021-22)' by Aminder Virdee. Photography of Postgraduate exhibition at Central Saint Martins by Younkok Choi.
Image Description(s)
There are three photographs shown in a row - they are all the same size and are divided by a thin white border inbetween each photograph.The first photograph, on the left:
The single xray box displays a colourful image in various green and yellow shades composed in an abstract fashion that simultaneously appears botanical and anatomical. In the centre of the entire image, there are green and dark green columns, travelling from the centre at the top of the image to the bottom akin to a ladder. This resembles the anatomical structure of a spine yet simultaneously appears similar to the stem of large plants. Branching out from this column are abstract shapes resembling floral elements such as leaves, petals and twigs. The floral elements that are closer to the column are in various shades of yellows and lime greens, and as it branches out, the colours alter to various shades of green, culminating in darker green lines and curves, resembling human ribs in skeletal form. Whilst appearing both anatomical and botanical, the darker green stem-like columns also appear mechanical. The structure starts to form an image of a torso with a unique blend of botanical and mechanical prostheses in the place where the skeletal elements of the neck and spine would usually be. Towards the top of the image, on the left and right sides, there are abstract yellow shapes suggestive of petals. In the top left and right corner of the image are lines of Punjabi script that read 'ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਵਿਰੋਧ ਦੇ ਸਥਾਨ ਹਨ', translating to 'Disabled bodies are sites of resistance'.
The second photograph, in the centre: The single xray box displays a colourful image in prominent shades of lilac, pink, black, and green on a cream-like translucent panel with a merge of what appears as both botanical (with suggestions of leaves and flowers) and anatomical (suggestions of bones and joints, including the arch of a pelvis) elements. The image also appears to have mechanical elements such as screws, plates, and devices - it is suggestive of bodily prostheses. The lilac, pink, black and green shapes arch around the view of Punjabi script 'ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਗਤੀਸੀਲਤਾ ਨ ਪਾਰ ਕਰਦੇਹਨ' translating to 'Disabled bodies transcend mobility'.
The third photograph, on the right: The single xray box displays a colourful image in reds, pinks, greens and yellows in an abstract fashion that simultaneously appears botanical and anatomical. There are two vertical columns of marks alluding to flowers and other plant-like structures. There are also bold darker red shapes that are suggestive of bones, and other elements are suggestive of mechanical elements such as screws, plates and prostheses. The columns bulge slightly in the lower third portion of the image and again are skeletal, suggestive of lower limbs, but it isn't exactly clear. The image also appears leafy. Positioned in the lower right-hand corner of the xray box is a line of Punjabi script that reads 'ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਭਵਿਿੱਖ ਹਨ', translating to 'Disabled bodies transcend mobility'.
Punjabi to English Translation
'Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures' - Punjabi translation from visuals - reading from left to right: Xray Box 1 (left):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਵਿ ਰੋਧ ਦੇਸਥਾਨ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are sites of resistance
Xray Box 2 (centre):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਗਤੀਸ਼ੀਲਤਾ ਨੰ ਪਾਰ ਕਰਦੇਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies transcend mobility
Xray Box (right):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਭਵਿਿੱਖ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are the future
Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures (2021-22) exhibits as a series of mixed-media and bio-digital images cultivated through digital art, data art and Artificial Intelligence and combines public-domain photographs of indigenous South Asian flora (manipulated through various computational art techniques), Punjabi scripture, and Virdee's personal archive of hospital-quantified x-rays. Presenting on 20th-century x-ray lightboxes, Virdee subverts the objectification of her lifelong subjection to medical imaging and the clinical, diagnostic, capitalist, white, male, ableist, and Western gaze.
To devise this sizeable ongoing project, Virdee has blended her artistic, autoethnographic, computational, and archival practices to address and make visible shared lived experiences of marginalised communities in symbiosis with her personal complex lived experiences, intersectional identity, and her daily fight against racism and ethnicism, xenophobia, ableism and disablism, classism, sexism/misogyny, sexualism, ageism, and other social injustices.
The bringing together of art, disability, technology, ecology, race and postcolonial studies is by no means an emerging intersection; instead, Virdee evidences the overlap across these disciplines that have been candidly ignored throughout history and contemporary studies. Furthermore, this convergence of disciplines alludes to caring for the future through cripping and decolonising the clinical and diagnostic gaze, the eco-justice movement, and National botanical art and science archives that have neglected the value of collective disabled experiences, specifically disabled BIPOC and of the diaspora. Accordingly, Virdee has created an embodied visual response she coins as the 'cybotanical' - the fusing of the disabled cyborg body (disabled people with internal and external implants, devices, technologies, prostheses, and modes of mobility) with botanical art, unburdened from the colonial and clinical gaze.
‘Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures’ (2021-22) by Aminder Virdee. Photography of exhibition for Mob-Shop, a disabled-led project at Derbyshire Libraries by
J. Sargeant, Edited by Aminder Virdee.
Image Description
Three x-ray boxes sit on a table and each has a colourful print on it of x-ray body parts with prostheses that are formed out of botanical art - the background of this photo has been manipulated into black and white. There are two single portrait xray boxes on either end and a double horizontal display xray box in the middle. Each xray box displays a cream-like translucent panel with a merge of what appears as both the botanical (with suggestions of leaves and flowers) and anatomical (suggestions of bones and joints, including the arch of a pelvis, a pair of knees and an upright torso). These abstract parts are in shades of greens, yellows, pinks, reds and lilac purples. Each anatomical-botanical part also appears to have mechanical elements such as screws, plates, and devices - from afar, and it is then suggestive of bodily prostheses. Each xray box also has different lengths of Punjabi script. The English translations for each Punjabi script from left to right are; Disabled bodies are sites of resistance, Disabled bodies transcend mobility, and Disabled bodies are the future.
Punjabi to English Translation
'Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures' - Punjabi translation from visuals - reading from left to right: Xray Box 1 (left):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਵਿ ਰੋਧ ਦੇਸਥਾਨ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are sites of resistance
Xray Box 2 (centre):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਗਤੀਸ਼ੀਲਤਾ ਨੰ ੂਪਾਰ ਕਰਦੇਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies transcend mobility
Xray Box (right):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਭਵਿਿੱਖ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are the future
The driving force behind 'Eco-Crip…' resides in reclaiming and decolonizing the realm of Indian botanical arts—specifically through Virdee's side-project, and assisting in the amplification of the South Asian artists behind the work, whose credits and acknowledgements have been erased and their works attributed to colonial commissioners, explorers, and institutions. While botanical art gained prominence in India during the 18th and 19th centuries under the colonial patronage of the East India Companies, 'flower painting' became renowned in the early 17th century. Painted in the Mughal miniature tradition, it was often more decorative than intended for scientific flora identification. The style of the art was referred to as Company School Painting—or 'Kampani' in Hindi—by art historians. However, this colonial term fails to capture South Asia’s rich and broad range of painting styles. The erasure is an ongoing reminder of the personal and cultural loss inflicted by the West.
Through research and collating public-domain historical and indigenous South Asian botanical photograph archives and the variations of plants found in South Asia, Virdee engages with its extraction from the hands of colonialism and the violence of its continued preservation in contemporary and white-led institutions and collections. This fight for ownership and defiance against erasure is also present in Virdee's personal medical archives.
Through the system of medicine, disabled bodies become sites of other people's work, where data is extracted, and boundaries are often unconsidered in the name of 'care'. In Eco-Crip, Virdee reinserts her intersectional identity, which has been continuously erased by the clinical, diagnostic and Western gaze, as a disabled-born, neurodivergent and chronically ill Brown Indian (mixed Punjabi-Hindi ancestry) woman of the diaspora born into poverty. Her presence (visible and invisible) becomes a site of beauty, possibility, and resistance that transcends Western and clinical ideals, mobilities, and ways of being—contesting dominant-negative stereotypes, beliefs, and representations of disabled, and disabled BIPOC and of the diaspora.
Image Description
A slide show that rotates, every 1.5 seconds, and repeats 3 portrait images of 3 x-ray light boxes sat upright at an angle, on a desk in front of a window. Each image is in the same very dark room with the light boxes switched on, glowing brightly. Slide 1: In the centre, a portrait light box on the desk displays a colourful image in shades of green and yellow. It appears leafy, with abstract yellow shapes towards the top suggesting flowers. Darker green elements suggest a spine with lighter green shapes resembling both plant stems/leaves and ribs. Within the image in the top left and top right corner is also a line of Punjabi script that reads ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਵਿਰੋਧ ਦੇਸਥਾਨ ਹਨ. To the right of this lightbox, the top corner of a second lightbox is visible. Slide 2: A close-up detail showing the white, powder-coated metal that frames two light boxes. On the frames, there is a screw, the on switch, and some signs of wear/rust on the metal. In the lower third of the image, the corners closest to the table are separated by a narrow gap with a thick black cable behind. On the lightbox on the left, there is a small section of an image that shows two thin, dark, vertical green lines and what looks like a painterly green leaf. The other lightbox shows a much smaller section of bright white light. Slide 3: In the centre, a portrait light box on the desk displays a colourful image in shades of greens, yellows, pinks and reds. There seem to be two vertical columns of marks, which allude to flowers and other plant-like structures. There are also bold darker red shapes that suggest leg bones, or screws. The columns bulge slightly in the lower third suggesting a pair of knees, but it isn't exactly clear. Within the image in the bottom right-hand corner is also a line of Punjabi script that reads ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਭਵਿਿੱਖ ਹਨ.
Punjabi to English Translation
'Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures' - Punjabi translation from visuals - reading from left to right: Xray Box 1 (left):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਵਿ ਰੋਧ ਦੇਸਥਾਨ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are sites of resistance
Xray Box 2 (centre):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਗਤੀਸ਼ੀਲਤਾ ਨੰ ੂਪਾਰ ਕਰਦੇਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies transcend mobility
Xray Box (right):
Punjabi: ਅਪਾਹਜ ਸਰੀਰ ਭਵਿਿੱਖ ਹਨ
English: Disabled bodies are the future
All historical archives have been constructed through biased colonialist and imperialist narratives, memories, and chosen buried pasts. However, annotated in Punjabi and amplifying the visibly and invisibly disabled Brown female body, the prints in Virdee's 'cybotanical' archives act as a signature to reclaim ownership of the artist's bodymind, complex lived experience and intersectional identity. The Punjabi script translates to "Disabled bodies are sites of resistance", "Disabled bodies transcend mobility", and "Disabled bodies are the future." This use of language is a further act to crip both the botanical and medical material.
As mentioned above, and as research is a vital part of her artistic methodology, Virdee started a side project, collecting the names of South Asian Botanical Artists whose works have been appropriated and their names censored from their own artworks. This drive for justice was integral to the creation and development of ‘Eco-Crip: Cybotanical Futures.’
Retrieved names of the South Asian artists aforementioned:
Bhawani Das
Rungiah
Govindoo
Manu Lall
Vishnupersaud
Mansur
Vishnu Prasad
Lakshman Singh
Cheluviah Raju
and Gorachand
These names have been found through navigating online and print archives, as well as the work of academics and collectors currently reinserting credits of South Asian artists into historical botanical collections. These include academics and writers for Marg Magazine (India), collector and curator William Dalrymple, and writer Martyn Rix.
Please do research the South Asian botanical art masters noted above, and ensure to credit them when sharing.
Personal Medical Data and Imaging (under the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR 2016), images and works.
All Rights Reserved ©️ 2023 Aminder Virdee.