Gardening the Suburbs

Like mapping, gardening is a political act, a place-making activity. Corinne Silva’s latest work, Gardening the Suburbs, examines how colonial practices can be traced through the process of gardening.

From 2010 to 2013, Corinne Silva created a trilogy of projects that take place between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Her journey traces marks left on the ground by Israel’s national and neoliberal agenda, winding through national parks, suburban gardens and other public areas across Palestine.

Supported by a Gasworks/Triangle Network International Fellowship, Silva first exhibited one of these projects, Gardening the Suburbs, a photographic and plant installation, at Makan Art Space, from 16th April to 31st May 2014, curated by ArtTerritories. Silva’s installation considers what gardens mean in the context of contemporary Israeli colonisation, reflecting on the ways in which the state of Israel attempts to connect with the earth, to spread and settle, to make roots and grass over the historical narrative of the land of Palestine. The work also connects this microcosm of colonialism to a pattern of neoliberal housing projects that shape landscapes worldwide.

This large-scale, undulating, irregular photographic wall installation is made up of clusters of photographs of Israeli suburban gardens. The shape of the installation loosely maps the way these suburbs manoeuvre from the coastal areas surrounding Tel Aviv across the West Bank and into the Jordan Valley, hugging the major roads and freeways and cutting off Palestinian villages from one another.

The exhibition was accompanied by a programme of events curated and organised by ArtTerritories at Makan, including “From the Garden to the Grove”, a botanical field-trip to the Royal Botanical gardens, plant nurseries selling indigenous plants, and a landscape-architect–led tour of notable neighbourhood gardens. The exhibition events programme was designed to question the political, ethical and social decisions made in tending one’s own garden, wherever that be in the world.

Gardening the Suburbs, solo exhibition, Makan Art Space, Amman, Jordan, 16 April - 31 May 2014, curated by ArtTerritories.

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