Botannica Tirannica

As seen in Toronto Star, NOW Toronto, and on CBC Fresh Air.

Koffler Arts is proud to present Botannica Tirannica by award-winning Brazilian artist Giselle Beiguelman. The exhibition explores how common botanical names both mirror and perpetuate societal prejudices against racial, cultural, gender, and social groups. Beiguelman was inspired to create this exhibition after receiving a gift of a Tradescantia zebrina seedling, commonly called “Wandering Jew”, a name referencing the 13th-century myth that recurred in Nazi propaganda. This led Beiguelman to investigate the complex, interwoven histories of botany, taxonomy and colonialism that often result in discrimination against specific groups of people.

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Beiguelman will work closely with two Indigenous experts to situate the exhibition in a Canadian context: Dr. Jonathan Ferrier, a Mississauga, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) scientist and a Biology professor at Dalhousie University, and Isaac Crosby, a Black/Ojibwa knowledge keeper, gardener and agriculture expert. Dr. Jonathan Ferrier will act as Indigenous botanical content lead and collaborate with Beiguelman on a display of living plants each with prejudicial names. Isaac Crosby will create The Garden of Resilience outside the exhibition in front of the Youngplace building on Shaw Street. It will include various plant species – considered to be invasive “weeds”. These weeds, which usually don't grow together, are a metaphor for human migration.

Alongside the display of plants, visitors to the gallery will engage with two series of images created using Artificial Intelligence (AI) – one series of still images, the other series in video – of reimagined hybrid plants that are positioned as resistant and resilient life forms in a post-natural, decolonialized garden. The exhibition also includes a soundscape by São Paulo-based composer, visual artist, and researcher Gabriel Francisco Lemos.

The exhibition debuts a never before exhibited series by Beiguelman called Poisonous, Noxious and Suspicious, which explores the use of mushrooms and garlic as Antisemitic symbols throughout history. Mushrooms were central to Nazi Antisemitic pedagogy, starring in the most important children’s book, Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), with text by Ernst Hiemer and illustrations by Philipp Rupprechtby, published by Julius Streicher in 1938. Garlic was also commonly associated with Jews. In Germany, some Antisemitic imagery from the Middle Ages and Renaissance depicts Jews holding garlic in one hand and, at times, holding a bag of money in the other hand. During the Spanish Inquisition in the 1490s, Jews were so closely associated with the consumption of garlic that merely eating garlic could draw suspicion and single out Jews for torture and death.

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“Giselle Beiguelman has created an exceptionally thoughtful - and beautiful - exhibition, where scholarly research fuses with great artistic vision. We’re delighted that Dr. Jonathan Ferrier and Isaac Crosby are working with Giselle and know that together this team will create an unforgettable exhibition.” – Matthew Jocelyn, General Director, Koffler Arts.

Botannica Tirannica originated at the Museu Judaico de São Paulo, Brazil (2022), curated by Ilana Feldman, and has since been exhibited in whole or in part at the 3rd Karachi Biennale in Pakistan (2022); Museo Sartorio in Trieste, Italy (2023); and Sesc Taubaté, São Paulo, Brazil (2023). Koffler Arts is the exclusive North American host.

Media Contact: Laura Chapnick-Klein, lchapnick@kofflerarts.org | Koffler Arts, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto ON, M6J 2W5

Photography by Jeremie Warshafsky and Toni Hafkenscheid

The Botannica Tirannica Team

Giselle Beiguelman is an award-winning artist, professor at the University of Sao Paulo and the author of several writings on digital culture. Beiguelman’s recent work investigates the colonialist imagination using AI technologies, collections and preservation methods for digital archives, and the aesthetics of memory in the 21st century. She is the author of Image Policies: surveillance and resistance in the datasphere (UBU Editora, 2021; 2nd ed. 2023) and Memory of amnesia: politics of oblivion (Edições Sesc, 2019), among others. Her works are part of the collections of museums in Brazil and abroad, such as ZKM (Germany), Jewish Museum in Berlin, MAC-USP, and Pinacoteca de São Paulo. She has received several national and international awards. She lives and works in São Paulo.

Jonathan Ferrier, PhD, BSc, BA, is a Mississauga, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) scientist and a Biology professor at Dalhousie University. He was a postdoctoral fellow and graduate student at the University of Ottawa, Department of Biology, The Montreal Botanical Garden, The New York Botanical Garden, The Ottawa Hospital, and Bruker BioSpin. Ferrier’s Indigenous heritage informs his work in food, medicine, material culture and ethnolinguistics.

The Ferrier Lab is dedicated to ethnobotany, ethnolinguistics, taxonomy, ecotoxicology, conservation biology, phytochemistry, ethnopharmacology, metabolomics, disease diagnostics, for contributions to Indigenous rights, education, and appropriate healthcare.

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Isaac Crosby, also known as Brother Nature, is a Black/Ojibwa knowledge keeper, gardener and agriculture expert with a passion for teaching and sharing his knowledge of Indigenous food systems. He is part of a large family from the Ojibwas of Anderdon, a pre-confederation band of mixed Black/Indigenous people living near Windsor, Ontario.

Crosby is the lead horticulturalist for the Indigenous Garden on the UTSC Campus Farm was initiated by Prof. Dani Kwan-Lafond (Sociology) in 2020, and manages the Three Sisters Garden and the medicine garden, open from early May to late October each year. He mentors students and Indigenous youth in Indigenous agriculture, teaching workshops about the benefits of using sister crops in the garden and medicine gardens. Crosby was the lead Indigenous gardener at Evergreen Brickworks for several years, and has been the garden expert on CBC Fresh Air.

Botannica Tirannica

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