Fieldwork

The global agricultural system has experienced immense homogenization and specialization over the past 50 years to pursue increased yields in response to the fear of food shortage with the rise of globalization and population. However, that achievement came at a high cost for environmental quality and resilience.

During my three-month-long research about soil health, I created three fieldwork gestures that serve as touchpoints to the broad issues of food, nature, and the human connection.

My research began with learning about the agricultural system and investigating how this part of the food system trickles down to the consumer level. Specifically, I learned about soil health and the differences between industrial and permaculture farming practices (no-tilling techniques, diversified crop rotation, year-round growing, and reintroducing perennial crops, and livestock grazing). Building soil health is a regenerative agriculture practice that can replenish and strengthen the crops, land, and nature around it.

Fieldwork 01 — Research Visualization

I created nine unique small handloom weaving that highlights sustainable farming practices with upcycled materials that I have collected. My thought process of the visual translations is as follows:

  1. Rotating crops and biodiversity are represented through variable areas of patchwork alternating the two colors and the number of yarn ends to represent a different species.

  2. No tilling and perennial planting are visualized in the back of the weaving. All the tail ends of the patterns are left untouched to represent the importance of perennial crop root systems to soil structure, and nutrients access through deeper root systems than annual crops.

The second piece is designed to represent GMO monocrop planting culture through this monotonous black and white stripe work. This part of the textile will be crafted using a knitting machine to juxtapose the first meticulously handwoven creation.

Fieldwork 02 — Phytoremediation

The 1970s garden activism inspires my next work in New York City to promote neighborhood empowerment and reconstruct people’s relations with nature through the community gardens. These are a few questions that are driving the next set of performative gestures:

How might we create critical conversations among our communities that allow everyone’s contribution?

  1. How might we create community engagement that is self-sufficient and ongoing?

  2. How might community participation be integral to the work itself?

Parallel to the soil health findings, I began to learn more about the local soil of NYC, known to have contaminated soil from the industrial and manufacturing era. One precedent I came across that sparked inspiration on this topic is Mel Chin’s Revival Field (1991-1993). Through his work, I was exposed to using hyperaccumulator plants as a phytoremediation method to regenerate the soil health of our built environment.

I chose to work with an accessible and familiar hyperaccumulator plant — Helianthus Annus, the common sunflower. With COVID-19 limiting our access to outdoor spaces, I chose my neighbor’s backyard to experiment with this. I combined a mixture of red clay, compost, and seeds to create 40 sunflower seed bombs and tossed them across the fence into the backyard. I hoped for the sunflower seeds to germinate, cohabit with the sprawling weeds, and begin the land remediation process.

Fieldwork 03 — Vermicompost

In the past couple of years, I’ve used composting as an act to reduce my carbon footprint. When I started this, I was fortunate to have the privilege and convenience of having a nearby ecology center that initiated a 3x-a-week compost drop-off point.

My next gesture is a reaction to my local community garden’s pause on compost drop-off due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resource limitation from The Department of Sanitation. I sought alternative methods to address the sudden shift in my food waste contribution. I discovered the process of vermicomposting using earthworms to decompose food waste. I am impressed by the notion of symbiosis happening right in my kitchen corner.

Reflection

For now, I envision the piece to be an agent to host fruitful conversations about our current food system, where participants are invited to sit and enjoy locally grown food. In another adaptation, I can see a performative ritual to connect my textile, remediation work, and vermicompost into one.

Two main ideas consistent through the different interventions are temporality and the lack of control of the medium. Creating these small gestures of work has been helpful as a part of the art-making process to navigate the various related topics — the act of doing as research. I am co-creating with the natural system to understand better how it works and then apply it to my work. This led me to the vision behind agroecology, the concept of revitalizing biodiversity and regeneration of our degraded land through working with the natural ecosystem, and slow design principles, the role of design to balance socio-cultural and individual needs with the environment's well-being.