Artist Prompt: FLORA-PHILIA
At Dia, our education department works closely with artists. These artist-designed prompts encourage people of all ages to connect with their surroundings as they relate to the body and find ways to be creative within the home.
FLORA-PHILIA
Designed by Diana Mangaser
Diana Mangaser, Unknown Polypody, 2020. Photo: Courtesy the artist
Plants are living things that inhabit the world with us. We bring them into our spaces, we cultivate and harvest food from them, we take shelter underneath them.
This exercise reflects on our relationship with plants. If we imagine our current situation as similar to theirs, we may understand their life (and ours) as not simply stuck in one place, but instead embedded within a particular context, in a dynamic exchange with the immediate surrounding environment, and connected through invisible networks to other plants (and people).
Moving at this different speed and scale of time, we may find ways to adapt that stem from new modes of self-nourishment, growth, and transformation.
Selecting a Plant
Think of a favorite plant. This might be a small, potted houseplant, a vegetable growing in your garden or in a farm, or a tree that you can see from your window or in a park. This might also be a plant you have never seen in person but would someday like to meet.
Making Friends with a Plant
Take some time with your plant-friend. Sit with them and try to see if you can place yourself in their position. What might they be feeling? thinking? imagining?
Care for your plant. You can offer them gifts of water, air, sunlight, or compost. Over time you may find that it has preferences. They may be happier with more sunlight than water or may need more air around its roots instead of soil.
Portrait of Your Plant-Friend
Draw a portrait of your plant. What makes the plant special? Are their particular qualities that you appreciate? Place your plant portrait somewhere where others might be able to see it by chance.
A Conversation with Your Plant-Friend
Here are some questions you may like to ask your plant. These questions are from interviews with artists and other creative people found online. Feel free to use them or make your own. Pose a question to your plant and see if your plant responds or resonates. Their answer might be silent or very, very quiet. It may come immediately or might pop into your head later, when you are sleeping or taking a shower. If they do respond, note down their answer(s).
What is your origin story?
What is your favorite time of the day?
What do you miss right now?
Can you feel yourself growing?
How much information can your mind actually hold?
Do you think creativity is something everybody has?
Does life have any essential purpose?
What is your reality?
Have you tried any experiments?
Where did this urge come from?
Do you care whether your pants are blue or green?
What is far to the right?
What is far to the left?
What is changing for you right now?
What is distance in form of time?
What is your process of letting things go?
What do you keep?
What do you believe?
What is this?
Where do you find the things you need?
Where do you find yourself?
We would like to see your creations and add a selection of them to the blog. Please share images and sound recordings of your work by emailing submissions@diaart.org.
Diana Mangaser is an artist-architect whose work employs architectural processes to mine the potential of interstitial and situational spaces, shaping and inhabiting these gaps in the built environment. Mangaser is an artist educator at Dia Beacon, where she works with the Arts Education Program. She is based in Newburgh, New York, where she directs Artist-In-Vacancy, a program that situates artists and their work within vacant properties in the Newburgh Community Land Bank.