What gets left behind in an emergency?

This installation is a re-planting and re-imagining of my grandfather’s beloved fruit garden outside the city of Tampa. 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 grandparent’s 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 emerged once again. The plants are constructed using hurricane research papers, published by University of Miami atmospheric scientists. Climate science coming out of Florida survives one of the United State’s most environmentally reckless and oppressive state governments. To plant these ideas in the dirt, to give them roots, is an act of stewardship and nourishment. It is also a way to cope with loss by attempting revival and finding growth within tragedy. The video and audio you hear come from interviewing local community members here in Charlottesville, prompting them with the question: What is the most irreplaceable object in your home? 

Practices of planting, gardening, and cultivating are deeply tied to our humanity and our stories of life, meaning, and morality. This project recontextualizes science media as living beings. Research papers are taken out of their hidden environments and transformed 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 same material, encouraging new methods of analysis and empathy. This work carves out a space for the individual to feel like they are a part of 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.