Garden State

In Garden State Corinne Silva uses photography and sound to explore how gardening has been used to mark out and progressively expand territory in contemporary Israel/Palestine. Garden State comprises a photographic installation of large format colour photographs accompanied by surround sound, together with a photographic series of 110 images.

In this show Silva considers the political relationship between gardens and colonization that has existed from the eighteenth century to the present day. Offering an ‘unexpected view on gardening’ (Wall Street Journal, 2015)

The work, produced during a series of visits Silva made to Israeli occupied territories in 2010-13, examines the symbolic demarcation of land through the planting of national parks, suburban gardens and other public areas. Silva describes gardens as ‘micro-landscapes, and gardening, like mapping, is a way of allocating territory’. Through a systematic photographic mapping of landscapes Silva encourages visitors to view gardening not simply as the act of nurturing a plot of land, but as something potentially far more sinister: a tool used in aggressive state expansion and occupation.

• http://mosaicrooms.org/event/garden-stat...
• http://www.corinnesilva.com/