In 2023, multidisciplinary artist Bonny Leibowitz’s world shifted when she stumbled upon an active demolition site in a shopping center in Richardson, Texas. She described the landscape as “both horrific and beautiful” – a scene of destruction and chaos situated right in the middle of the inner city Dallas suburb. Braving the sweltering Texas heat, Leibowitz made multiple trips to the site, photographing it extensively and collecting pieces of debris from the wreckage that would later comprise her series Adventures in Plunderland.
In its iteration at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center (OC3) in Dallas, Texas, Adventures in Plunderland takes the form of a site-specific installation in which the natural and the man-made are fused to create a futuristic, hybrid ecosystem trapped within the gallery’s walls. Gooey green foam seeps out of pieces of spindly driftwood, like an alien fungus. Large sheets of polymer-coated photographs wrap around and drape over salvaged metal and rusty wire, creating towering architectural structures that stretch to the ceiling. Metallic tree stumps and mossy, brain-like globs punctuate the space amongst the larger pieces. I feel as though I’ve stumbled upon an abandoned junk yard that nature is slowly reclaiming.
As I meander through Leibowitz’s fantastical environment, I find myself growing more confused with the objects in front of me. When I approach a sheet of corrugated metal, it turns out to be merely an enlarged photograph of the material, light as a feather and pliable under my touch. When I inch closer to an earthy tree root, it transforms into a mangled piece of iron covered in moss. I am never quite sure what I’m looking at, which is the artist’s intention behind this clever blending of material and texture. Leibowitz highlights the dichotomy between the natural and built environments, amalgamating them until their identity is questionable and, ultimately, indistinguishable. Even the installation’s color palette combines biohazardous hues like neon orange and mint green with the industrial tones of metal and iron, alongside natural earth tones.
As the subject of art and environment continues to be a major topic of exploration in the field, Leibowitz addresses the theory of postnaturalism–a perspective centered around the belief that we are living in a time beyond pure nature, where humans have altered natural organisms irreversibly. Just as her experimental sculptures prompt us to question what we see, Leibowitz also challenges our perception of the world and the binary of nature versus industry.
As I contemplate these concepts, my mind wanders to the phenomenon of Edaphoecotropism–the scientific term for when a plant’s living tissue grows around or overtakes a foreign object. You may have seen this in a tree planted too close to a fence or sign, wrapping around it as it grows and eventually becoming completely inseparable.
But Adventures in Plunderland is not just calling us to question our perception of nature and reality; it also prompts us to imagine the land’s infinite histories and the futures that await us. Leibowitz pieces together fragments of the postnatural ecosystem, connecting various geographic locations and time spans, creating new narratives that exist in an ephemeral state for the brief period of this exhibition.
The exhibition is not confined to the OC3 walls. If you venture twenty minutes east of the gallery to the Trinity River Audubon Center, you can spot a few of Leibowitz’s sculptural installations nestled within the center’s urban hardwood forest. There, the installation takes on an entirely new life within the context of the natural environment. I envision a reality where nature reclaims the hybrid creation–where the land swallows up the industrial chunks and the autumnal foliage slowly covers the photograph of that very same foliage. And when someone stumbles upon it one day, they are unsure where nature stops, and the artificial begins, and they will never quite be sure.
As I pace the OC3 gallery, I spot a lopsided flat fragment mounted on an otherwise blank white wall. Resembling an angelic blue sky with wispy white cloud formations, I assume this to be another one of Leibowitz’s photographs. But when I ask her about it, she informs me that the piece is created from spray paint, which makes me smile. Another quiet illusion.
All photos courtesy of the artist
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Adventures in Plunderland at Oak Cliff Cultural Center
Curated by Iris BechtolDecember 6, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Oak Cliff Cultural Center and Trinity River Audubon Center
About the writer: Emma S. Ahmad is a visual arts writer, editor, and journalist based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She holds an MA in Art History and is a regular contributor to regional publications like Glasstire and the Southwest Contemporary. @emma_snow