Rootless Discrimination

2019

Performance art, approximately 5 - 7 minutes

A performer transplants a plant from a small pot into a larger one, an ordinary gesture of care, the kind that promises growth, room to expand, new ground to settle into.

The artist then enters, taking up a plant garter and uses it first to remove the plant's buds, then, continuing the same restrictive gesture, to strip away its roots. The rootless plant is repotted into the larger vessel it was promised, now unable to hold onto the ground it's been given.

She hands the garter to the audience. Beside her, an orchid, and an epiphyte that grows without rooting in soil — waits on a plinth.