Seeds: Containers of a World to Come
By Suzanne Vanderhoef
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University has a new exhibition on display…one that may sound small at first, but has a much bigger message when you dig a little deeper.
It’s called “Seeds: Containers of a World to Come,” and it brings together the work of ten international artists whose research-based practices are all focused around deep investigations into plant, human land relationships.”
“A show about the environment is a very big topic, so we wanted to focus it in on the idea of the seed,” explains Curator Meredith Malone. “And the seeds are an interesting thing because they are sort of this kernel of life and they also hold knowledge and cultural, but they also are portents for the future as well.”
Some of the artists use literal seeds in their work – such as Amber Coco and Alley Irons’ work “The Next Epoxy Library.” The pair collected native seeds from around the St. Louis area, including the Mississippi River and the River Des Peres and created an upcycled seed library.
Meanwhile, artist Carolina Kaido created a larger-than-life work called “The Three Sisters,” in which you can literally walk between giant models of three different seeds which are mutually beneficial to one another as well as to human cultivation.
As Malone puts it, “Each work really has a range of layers that you can engage with in terms of the materials, the artist using, the specific issues that they’re engaging with and the ideas as well.”
The exhibition is on display at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum through July 28th.
