Nature often appears in gardening and agriculture as a construct—an “alter-nature”—that revolves around human desire and intervention. Gardening becomes a somewhat anti-ecological practice, one that places the human gardener in a position of authority, where imposed ideals govern natural growth. Bonsai, similarly, represents a process of shaping and bending plant forms to conform to human ideals of beauty.
Bonsai Reimagining reflects on our relationship with the natural world through a humanistic instinct to control. Picking up cutting devices and wiring techniques I have seen in my mom’s bonsai garden, I re-examine the concept and practice of gardening through a reconfiguration of mass-manufactured materials, often fitting together by chance in a playful interaction of experimentation and assembly. This body of work contemplates on the relation between the geometric and the organic; seeks to examine the perpetual possibility of spatial arrangement; all while facilitating a middle ground for intergenerational gardening.