NYC’s Apex Art Gallery Features Exhibition Curated by Professor Tashima Thomas

The concrete jungle is now home to a botanical-inspired art exhibition co-curated by Meadows assistant art history professor Tashima Thomas. The exhibition, titled Flora Fantastic: Eco-Critical Contemporary Botanical Art, is running from November 4 through December 23 at the Apex Art Gallery in the New York City neighborhood of Tribeca and aims to create conversation about embodiment, inhabitation, belonging and dwelling.

The exhibition began to take shape when Thomas and her co-curator Corina L. Apostol, who originally met when they were in graduate school, discovered that their shared interests and recent research overlapped in a meaningful way. Their exhibition features work from artists who are looking critically at the colonial past and deconstructing history through the lens of the botanical. It aims to examine our relationship with the environment, including ecocritical perspectives, contested landscapes, colonial histories, and the power of plants as poisons and panaceas.

“I’m excited about opening up dialogue regarding the secret life of botanicals and creating a space for community and exchange,” says Thomas of the exhibition. “Ultimately, I hope this exhibition inspires and supports a deeper appreciation for the plant kingdom.”

Gallery goers will have the opportunity to explore these themes through work from artists Kristaps Ancāns, Tamika Galanis, Scherezade García, Anna Malicka, Joiri Minaya, Agate Tūna and Virginia Wagner, who together create a collaborative botanical timeline positioning plants as protagonists in colonial history. For those who can’t make it to the gallery in person, a 3D tour of the space is available on the Apex Art Gallery website. This enables the user to click and navigate through the space as if they are really there, and even click on the audio and visual sources to listen to the videos and animation works in the show.

Thomas and Apostol’s collaboration has also been extended into the publishing world and the pair have an edited volume, “Flora Fantastic,” under contract with Routledge Press that will be released in 2023.

Thomas's art exhibition is one of many exciting Meadows-affiliated events taking place in New York City this December. To view a full list of events, click here.