hot air
In her latest exhibition, Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds, Kariann Fuqua invites viewers to reconsider their relationship with the natural world—specifically the wild plants we so often dismiss as nuisances. Through a collection of drawings, photographs and found objects gathered from her acre of land in Mississippi, Fuqua examines the ecological and cultural narratives tied to “weeds,” challenging the capitalist obsession with control that underpins the American lawn.
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Fuqua’s work draws on Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy, a framework for imagining and embodying just and liberated futures. Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds resonates with Brown’s call for intentional, small-scale actions that foster interdependence and regeneration. By focusing on the overlooked and undervalued, Fuqua highlights the resilience and adaptability of weeds, offering them as metaphors for hope and survival amidst environmental breakdown. Just as Brown looks to fractals, mycelial networks, and natural growth patterns to illustrate decentralized and relational systems of change, Fuqua’s exploration of weeds reveals the interconnectedness and mutual benefit inherent in nature.
I think of the undervaluing of invisible labor—the work of artists, gardeners, manual laborers, service workers, and so many others whose contributions are often dismissed despite their essential role in shaping both cultural and ecological landscapes. Gardeners cultivate growth through patience and care, often fighting against systems that seek to impose order and efficiency over natural rhythms. Similarly, artists engage in deep, methodical processes—drawing connections, reimagining systems, and tending to ideas that may take time to fully emerge. Laborers and service workers sustain the structures we rely on, yet their efforts remain largely unseen and unacknowledged. Fuqua’s work, much like these forms of labor, reminds us that slow, intentional care is a radical act—one that resists commodification and centers the overlooked as essential to survival.
Enter Mierle Laderman Ukeles—like Ukeles scrubbing the museum steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum with cloth diapers; we might imagine Fuqua’s work as an act of maintenance—wiping away seed pods, tending to overlooked ecologies, caring for what capitalism discards. Just as Ukeles blurred the boundaries between labor, care, and ecological stewardship, Fuqua’s work similarly collapses distinctions between artistic practice, environmental caretaking, and acts of resistance. Both artists ask us to reconsider what is valued as work, what is dismissed as maintenance, and who performs these essential acts of care.
In thinking about the politics of labor and land, I also turn to Torkwase Dyson, whose work interrogates the relationship between Black geographies, ecology, and survival. Where Ukeles foregrounds the maintenance of institutional and domestic spaces, Dyson’s abstract visual language reflects histories of land use and forced displacement—how bodies navigate and adapt to systems of control. Dyson’s explorations of spatial histories and ecological survival echo Fuqua’s focus on resilience—both artists highlight the relationships between control, adaptation, and the unseen forces that shape our world. Dyson’s geometric forms and fluid spatial compositions suggest an embodied understanding of landscape, a way of moving through spaces that have been shaped by capitalism, colonialism, and climate crisis. Like Fuqua, Dyson highlights the unseen forces that shape our world, asking us to consider whose labor, whose histories, and whose ecologies are left out of dominant narratives.
I am also drawn to parallels with Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield—A Confrontation, executed in 1982. In an act of protest, Wheatfield was a bold critique of capitalism and environmental mismanagement, turning an urban landfill near Wall Street into a flourishing wheat field. Planted atop land excavated during the construction of the Twin Towers, the project challenged ideas of financial power, resource distribution, and ecological responsibility. Denes and a group of volunteers cultivated the wheat by hand, working against the backdrop of a city that often prioritizes economic growth over environmental stewardship. Initially met with skepticism, the project evolved into a communal space, drawing in city dwellers who formed an unexpected relationship with the field. By repurposing a site of waste into one of sustenance, Wheatfield questioned prevailing notions of land use, labor, and ownership, underscoring the tensions between unchecked economic expansion and the basic human need for nourishment.
This confrontation of space, labor, and value all intermingle with the audience as we pace through the “fields” of Stand4 Gallery. Plastic bags—simple, everyday materials—serve as both preservation and process, mirroring the labor of maintaining and protecting what is essential but often dismissed, or rather, taken for granted. There is a mindful relational transaction that we experience—one of both familiarity and perhaps disgust at the presence of weeds. Their beauty, along with the care involved in harvesting and sharing seeds, reflects a larger push to challenge unquestioning and arbitrary efforts to create hierarchy among plants.
The act of collecting and preserving seeds runs throughout the exhibition, embedding the work in shared labor and intergenerational care. Family members helped harvest and process seeds, reinforcing these connections. In the spring of 2024, dandelion seeds were gathered from every plant that bloomed in the artist’s yard, while dill weed and cosmos seeds were collected and shared with viewers—emphasizing the communal and cyclical nature of these plants.
The exhibition presents a variety of interconnected ways of thinking, creating a symbiotic and exponentially poignant experience. Dandelions surface throughout the collection from varied vantage points—their adaptability is reflected in layered drawings that evoke airbrush or spray paint, full of movement and immediacy, like seeds blown from a stem and drifting away. The connection between breath, wind, and impermanence is tangible, capturing the fleeting yet resilient nature of these plants and their persistent survival.
Fleeting impressions take form through the delicate process of anthotypes, where plant-based pigments stain paper with a quiet yet enduring presence. In the intimate back gallery space, these pieces resonate the strongest. Their soft turmeric insistence is both fragile and persistent, reflecting the ephemeral quality of the medium itself. The imprint of light, time, and organic matter connects to the land in ways that other materials cannot, deepening the viewer’s sense of interdependence and impermanence.
The vacillation between far and near is also reflected in the macro photographs. The floating circles of bright color in a black matrix seem to peer at us as closely as we interrogate the natural abstractions within them. These vivid images complement the hand-drawn silhouetted work, extending the exhibition’s dialogue between the human and the natural world. Together, the overall collection and presentation of Fuqua’s work fill the viewer with a sense of awareness and wonder, a recognition of the overlooked beauty and significance embedded in what we dismiss as weeds.
Through a delicate interplay of chaos and control—hallmarks of her practice—Fuqua’s pieces evoke a simultaneous reverence for the power of nature and a deep sense of unease about humanity’s role in its degradation. Her layered mark-making, dissected photographs, and nuanced abstractions reveal the complexity of natural systems, pointing to the invisible mechanisms that sustain life. In this way, her work mirrors Emergent Strategy’s emphasis on adaptability and resilience, as both artist and thinker explore how overlooked, small-scale phenomena can ripple outward to create profound change.
Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds is both an ecological call to action and an invitation to shift our perspective—offering viewers a chance to reconsider what we value, what we discard, and what might be gained by letting go of control. Much like Brown’s fractal approach to change, where small, intentional acts scale into systemic transformation, Fuqua’s work reminds us that the micro (a single weed, a single mark) carries the potential to reshape the macro. Fuqua’s exhibition reflects Brown’s hopeful yet urgent vision for a future shaped by collective care, adaptability, and the recognition of interdependence.
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Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds, New Work by Kariann Fuqua
at Stand4 Gallery and Community Arts Center
414 78th Street, 1st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
on view through March 1, 2025
Saturday, 12-3PM and by appointment. Contact Jeannine Bardo to schedule an appointment or for more information: jbardo.stand@gmail.com / 917-842-7958.
About the writer: john ros (they, them) is a queer, non-binary, multiform conceptual installation artist working between Eastern Connecticut, New York City, and Boston, Massachusetts. They are currently a Ph.D. student at Tufts University and hold an MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, and a BFA from SUNY Binghamton. john’s mixed media conceptual installations focus on ritual as performance, space/place, light and time. Their work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections worldwide. They are the director of studioELL, a space for radical education in studio art practice, which they founded in London, England, in 2015. john also teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, MA, and Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, CT.