Tending the shy weed is a curatorial research project by Laura Plant which looks at the transitory lives of plants in a globalised world. It assembles as a series of fragmented curatorial responses bringing together artistic practices which invoke marginal human encounters with these botanical subjects. It asks how, in staging plants as complicit participants and witnesses in the geopolitical territories within which they circulate, artists not only have the capacity to trace stories of empire entwined with plant histories and environmental violence but also to gather a feeling response to plant-human relations. Speculations emerge from theories of plant intelligence, disrupting the image of a ‘passive’ nature and attesting instead to a complexity of plant-life that goes beyond extractive resource. In 2019, these investigations will be situated from the two vantage points of the UK and Mexico, with curatorial responses taking place in London, Michoacán and Oaxaca, investigating the different ways plant kinships permeate through culture and place.

The project takes it’s name from Mimosa Pudica, otherwise known as the bashful, humble or shrinking plant, which is native to Central and South America. The plant, which was first introduced to Europe by collectors to grow in ornamental gardens yet is also considered an invasive weed and agricultural threat in many regions, has been of interest in plant ontology studies due to it’s response to physical stimuli and it’s ability to retain memory of these interferences.