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Rodrigo BUENO
Untitled, from the series "Taken Furniture", 2016

Antique chair and plants, dimensions vary

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Tropical plants sprout from a dilapidated antique chair. The work by Brazilian artist Rodrigo Bueno is beautiful and unsettling in the way it disrupts human notions of the home. The damaged seat suggests the abandonment of a supposedly contained, sheltered space, which challenges our human instincts. Yet, the work also acknowledges that structures have afterlives in a more-than-human world, creating new forms of safe havens for plants and other organisms. The interplay between tropical plants and the European style chair also suggests a post-colonial reading of the work, speaking to plants as a tool for collective cultural healing. The work is unlike the two paintings in Roots. It does not indulge in an exercise of post-human ruin-porn, nor is it a work fuelled by fear for nature's survival. Rather, it is a quiet celebration of regeneration in the face of abandonment.

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© 2021 MADELEINE BROOKS GILLESPIE. Virtual exhibition designed for Art History 226 at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington

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