BlackStar Projects is pleased to present Venus Flytrap, a site-specific, four-day performance series and summer-long installation by Joiri Minaya that will take place at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. Curated by writer and editor Dessane Lopez Cassell, the commissioned works will reflect on the intertwined legacies of freedom, extraction and ecology in North America’s oldest surviving botanical garden.
Much like the Venus flytrap, Joiri Minaya’s practice often employs beauty—utilizing sensuality, lush florals and hues—to invite deeper reflection on thornier aspects of history and the ongoing impacts of colonialism. Central to the performance series in Venus Flytrap will be new iterations of Minaya’s bodysuits, which she has previously deployed to critique the colonial-era conflation of the Caribbean with the image of a sanitized, idyllic paradise, associations which remain stubbornly pervasive today. More specifically, Minaya uses the bodysuits to examine the performative role that women and their bodies have been made to play in the creation of a commercially palatable set of images that stand in for the complexity of the Caribbean as a whole.
Designed with appropriated fabrics that she sources from the ‘tropical’ sections of both online and brick-and-mortar stores, Minaya repurposes these existing prints to effectively critique their production in the first place as images which reflect a commodified aesthetic of the Caribbean. Past suits have been tailored to contort the body into a single, fixed pose—typically one sourced from imagery found in postcards or tourism advertisements and which position the female body as a site of fantasy and consumption—so that the performer is understood to be physically constrained by the stereotypical images of tropical paradise. In Venus Flytrap, the new bodysuits will differ from these earlier examples not only by allowing the wearer freedom of movement, so that rather than emphasize restriction they will instead facilitate motion, fluidity and change, but also with the patterns Minaya is designing for them. Rather than reflect the stereotypical imagery of ‘paradise’ or ‘the tropics,’ Minaya has referenced botanical illustrations to create specific yet abstract renderings of various plant species that have been historically and culturally significant to Indigenous peoples and those of African descent throughout the Americas.
Each performance will take place at Bartram’s Garden, where Minaya will transform designated areas into an installation of newly designed textiles and canopies developed in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. An array of chairs and artist-designed blankets and bandanas will be produced in partnership with ITA Leisure Goods and populated throughout the installation to encourage visitors to rest and reflect on Minaya’s interventions.
To develop the choreography for the performances Minaya will collaborate with Philadelphia-based artist and choreographer Jonathan González and enlist an ensemble of Philadelphia-based performers. Though the performances will all depart from the same choreography, Minaya will invite the specificity and novelty that accompanies a new day and with it a new audience, so that each performance stands as a unique experience.
Established in 1728, Bartram’s Garden is the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America and as such it encapsulates the complexities of Philadelphia’s history and our relationships with land more broadly. From its earliest uses as a hub for Indigenous trade, to the role of founder John Bartram in popularizing Eurocentric notions of ‘modern botany’—including his family’s role in promoting the Venus flytrap as their own discovery, effectively erasing its pre-colonial history—Bartram’s Garden can be understood as a microcosm for the ongoing colonial experiment.
With Venus Flytrap, Minaya extends her longrunning interest in critically exploring both the histories and possibilities of local and Indigenous plant life. Together, Minaya and Cassell will reveal the hidden stories of labor and anti-colonial resistance buried in the grounds of Bartram’s Garden and the historic Kingsessing neighborhood in which it resides, while tracing their echoes across the Americas.
“BlackStar is proud to present this visionary new work from Joiri Minaya, which not only illuminates the roots of colonialism in new ways but invites us, amidst ongoing uncertainty, to reflect on and imagine other possibilities for our communities,” said Chief Executive and Artistic Officer, Maori Karmael Holmes.
Additional programming will be announced in the coming weeks.
Major support for Venus Flytrap has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the William Penn Foundation.
About Joiri Minaya
Joiri Minaya is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works in photography, digital media, film, performance, sculpture, textiles and painting. Born in New York and raised in the Dominican Republic, Minaya describes her multiculturally-informed work as ‘a reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing, and exorcizing imposed histories.’ Minaya has recently been part of exhibitions and screenings at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as international exhibitions like the Prospect 6 New Orleans Triennial, the Cooper Hewitt Triennial and the Sharjah Biennial 15. She is a recent recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship, NYSCA / NYFA Artist Fellowship, Jerome Hill Fellowship, Artadia award and has been an artist in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Light Work, Socrates Sculpture Park and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
About Dessane Lopez Cassell
Dessane Lopez Cassell is a New York-based editor, writer and curator. Her work spans film and visual art and their intersections, with a particular interest in race and gender. Cassell’s writing has been published in various magazines, journals, and books, including The Los Angeles Times, The Criterion Collection, Hyperallergic and Film Comment. She has curated exhibitions and screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Museum of Modern Art, Metrograph/Abrons Arts Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem and Anthology Film Archives. Cassell is a former programmer for BlackStar Film Festival and former Editor-in-Chief of BlackStar’s journal, Seen.
About BlackStar Projects
BlackStar Projects, founded in 2012 by Maori Karmael Holmes as BlackStar Film Festival, creates the spaces and resources needed to uplift the work of Black, Brown and Indigenous artists working outside the confines of genre. Beyond the annual film festival the organization produces year-round programs, including film screenings, exhibitions, a filmmaker seminar, a film production lab and a journal of film, art and visual culture.
These programs provide artists opportunities for viable strategies for collaborations with other artists, audiences, funders and distributors. BlackStar is working towards a liberatory world in which a vast spectrum of Black, Brown and Indigenous experiences is irresistibly celebrated in arts and culture.