What gets left behind in an emergency?

This installation is a re-planting and re-imagining of my grandfather’s beloved fruit garden outside of Tampa, Florida. In late September 2024, the deadliest hurricane in the United States since Katrina made landfall where the east coast of Florida meets the Gulf of Mexico. Her name was Helene. Despite being lucky enough to evacuate, the storm destroyed my grandparents’ home and all their possessions. The same fate, or worse, met countless others in the area and multiple other states. What wasn’t damaged by the winds and flooding was ruined by the ensuing combination of hot days, waterlogged objects, and no power; mold devoured everything. The storm did not spare the non-human beings who were unable to leave, viciously killing the garden my grandfather spent many years tending and raising from the seeds of his own meals. Banana, mango, avocado, vine, and flower plants overtake the toppled installation furniture as if time has passed, and the natural succession of growth after disaster has replayed once again. The plants are constructed with a paper-maché technique that utilizes hurricane research papers, specifically those published by the University of Miami’s atmospheric scientists. Climate science coming out of Florida survives one of the United States’ most environmentally reckless and oppressive state governments. To plant these ideas in the dirt, to give them roots, is a ritual act of stewardship and nourishment. As an attempt at revival, the work is also a way to cope with loss. Audio and video recordings of interviews play throughout the installation; community members in Charlottesville, VA, answer the question: What is the most irreplaceable object in your home?  While we grieve what is lost, we must also attend to what remains. By focusing on what is still worth saving, climate doom can be re-rendered as the site of a productive adaptivity.

Practices of planting, gardening, and cultivating are deeply tied to our humanity and our stories of life, meaning, and morality. This project imagines science media can become living beings. Research papers emerge from their hidden, digital environments and transform into sculpture, a medium the general public knows how to engage with. In the installation, anyone can walk among climate science; they can gaze, inspect, hear, and see the papers come alive. Data becomes emotional and aesthetic information, restoring some of the subjectivity and creativity that (so-called) objective, rigorous Science tries to strip away. A sculptural interpretation complements and expands an academic interpretation of the material, encouraging new methods of analysis and empathy. This work invites the individual viewer to feel like they can take part in environmental conversations. The dots, lines, and charts are symbols of more than just technical information: we are the data. Environmental science is for and about the everyday person—our families, friends, followers, teachers, and neighbors—telling the collective story of all entangled species and systems.