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“The exhibition’s title, Unnamed for Decades is both a description of an obscure plant and an acknowledgment of certain freedoms discovered in registering the strange, which, long relegated to the margins and unexamined, remains a powerfully latent domain. Life forms can thrive outside of the systems we invent to affirm their existence; in nature, nothing exists alone.” —Ellen Y. Tani, PhD on Erin Johnson

While we here at Daily Plinth are as eager as anyone to get back to “normal” exhibition openings, meeting artists, talking to curators, and being inspired by new art, we have been inspired by the creative ways that institutions are bringing that experience home to us during these times of lockdown. Recently, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art hosted a “virtual opening” for their exhibition of new work by Erin Johnson, Unnamed for Decades (now open in person through September 20, 2020). The live event featured the artist in a casual but fascinating conversation with CMCA director Suzette McAvoy, as well as remarks from the Director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Donna McNeil, CMCA Associate Curator Bethany Engstrom (who also guides us on a gallery walkthrough of the exhibition), and Ellen Tani, the A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts. The exhibition homepage also features a great virtual walkthrough of the galleries, to accompany the show.

From the Center for Maine Contemporary Art:

Unnamed for Decades presents a series of new site-specific installations by artist Erin Johnson, recipient of the 2nd annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Fellowship, awarded to a Maine artist in recognition of outstanding work.

Spanning two galleries, the exhibition explores Johnson’s ongoing interest in the complexity of collectivity, the wide-ranging consequences of scientific research, as well as dissidence, desire, and the queer body. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a text about Solanum plastisexum – an Australian bush tomato whose sexual expression has confounded scientists and appears to be unpredictable and unstable, challenging even the fluid norms of the plant kingdom.

This enigmatic plant is central to I might not be here when you come, filmed in Bucknell University’s Solanum plastisexum lab and the Huntington Botanical Garden in Los Angeles. The voice-over is an amalgamation of texts including love letters between conservation writer Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, and interviews with botanist Tanisha Williams. In an adjacent series of photographs and video installations, a group of friends, peers, and lovers engage in collective, queer and desirous exchanges.

Reflecting on feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies,” the exhibition considers questions surrounding the interrelationship between scientific and political practices, the reinvention of what it means to be human, and climate crisis.