The Wardian: Confiscated Dendrobiums and Displaced Identities

The Wardian: Confiscated Dendrobiums and Displaced Identities addresses issues around displacement and migration.

I randomly encountered a group of arrested potted plants from the border of the United States at a Botanic Garden, and I was intrigued by the history behind these mysterious plants. Reviewing a compiled list of confiscated plants preserved at the garden, I chose a Dendrobium orchid that arrived in the Los Angeles port in 2000 and was archived at the Botanic Garden of Smith College in Northampton in 2001. The flower, originally from Cambodia designated to Pheng Mai, Wichita, Kansas, has been rescued at the Garden for more than 20 years, yet its specific species has not been identified by the experts.

Through archive research and multiple field visits to the Botanic Garden and Harvard Herbarium Library, I was able to investigate in-depth the plant’s geographic origins, medical properties, cultural identities, international travel histories, pictorial representations in specimen archives, and its temporary home at the garden. Retracing the journey of this illegally traded, ecologically endangered, confiscated - then rescued - Dendrobium orchid, I realized how those disparate pieces of knowledge and powers shape the mechanism by which institutions and legal systems transfer and detain plants.

Five hand-welded metal structures are the primary artifacts for my research. The shape of the structure was inspired by the Wardian case, a piece of Victorian technology invented in the 18th century that radically changed the global environments and colonial planting. Each structure stands as an individual signifier of the legislative, sociopolitical, biotic, and ethnomedicinal knowledge systems. Inside each structure, multiple prints floating in different layouts contain information that has been altered or visual documentation that has been distorted manually.

One of the metal structures has a mini projector looping videos and facing towards the ground. A Speaking Dendrobium is a looped video with morphing Dendrobium species generated by a machine learning algorithm. 1,000 digital photos of the Dendrobium, one of the largest orchid species that has been ecologically endangered and illegally traded, are transformed through the machine’s own rules of re-creating, re-presenting, and deconstructing the natural taxonomy of plants and plant hybrids. The voice-over includes excerpts from interviews with 8 international students, workers, and refugees who anonymously talked about their experiences of being ‘temporarily confiscated,’ or being settled at ‘in-between’ space on the border. The interview scripts are collaged and transformed into unnamed AI voices, intertwining with the animated yet artificial purity of the classification of the plant form, questioning the instruments, infrastructures, and institutions behind the identification and detainment of living beings in our society.

Together, the artifacts enter into a dialogue that invites the viewer to question, beyond the journey of the Dendrobium orchid, our relationship with one another.