28/10/2023
Ella Braidwood writes in the Guardian about the Kew Gardens exhibition on Queer Life of Plants, which runs until the end of October. “I think there’s comfort for queer people in nature, because it does embrace us,” says artist Jeffrey Gibson, whose new artwork, House of Spirits, was created for the exhibition. “It allows us to project everything from beauty to sexuality, even feelings of rejection and depression and death.” Elsewhere in her essay, Ella discusses the symbolism of plants for the LGBTQIA communities and asks whether this is to do with our innate understanding of them as parts of the tree of life (no pun intended) which reproduce hermaphroditically, or have changeable gender identities, or who have multiple aspects to their sexualities. Ella refers to moving projects such as the Pansy Project, which leaves symbolic pansies at the sites of homophobic and transphobic abuse. Ella also says "In recent years, LGBTQ+ gardening groups and collectives have sprung up around Britain, from Glasgow to Newcastle to London, looking at everything from community plots to food security and environmental justice. In 2020, designer and illustrator Sixto-Juan Zavala was inspired to set up his group, Queer Botany, after moving to London from Texas. “I thought there was so much potential in botany for queer theory,” says Zavala, who also wants his group to provide somewhere for people to “connect to the queer community in a space that’s not focused on alcohol”.
https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-in-the-gardens
https://www.govanhillbaths.com/projects/whats_on/lgbtqi-gardening/
https://www.instagram.com/topsoilqueergardening/
https://www.instagram.com/queerbotany/
