CelineSianiDjiakoua

Using this blog as a research sketchbook, here are some photos I took from the RHS Botanical Art and Photography Show 2026. My favourite work was Louise Sayers's. I was also touched by the words of some artists as they echoed with my own experiences and feelings from working with plants. I found Denise Bernon's work very Victorian in a macabre and dry scientific way. Corine Whitehouse's reminded me of my own interest for glasshouses, even though I am more interested in the artificiality and somehow in the selfishness of wanting to keep plants that without heating and watering wouldn't survive in our climate. EMILIJA PETRAUSKIENĖ Tulipa 'Libretto Parrot' 2025 Wet plate collodion negative, Gelatin silver print, Selenium toned LIBBY ELLIS "(...) I meet flowers where they live, growing in the garden, and find that communing with them in season and place deepens the intimacy of their portraits. (...) " Chrysanthemum 'Lava' #8399 2025 Archival Pigm...

This month, I visited the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, near Brussels. The context in which this museum was created is very heavy. I started with a walk along the site where the 1897 colonial exhibition took place and where "African villages"/"human zoos" were built. Ce mois-ci, j'ai visité l'AfricaMuseum à Tervuren, près de Bruxelles. Le contexte dans lequel ce musée a été créé est très lourd. J'ai commencé par une promenade sur le site où l'exposition coloniale de 1897 a eu lieu et où des « villages africains »/"zoos humains" ont été construits. Aerial view of the site where the 4 "African villages" were built. Vue aérienne du site ou les 4 "villages africains" étaient construits.   Sites of the "villages" - site des "villages View of the park - vue du parc One of the cast-iron statues that were displayed at the international exhibition in 1897. Une des statues en fonte qui était exposée à l'exposition I...

  As I am starting a new research, or rather continuing with  The Untouched Collection , I feel the need to clarify certain terms.  Lydia Ayame Hiraide's article brought some light for me, even though, as I understand, polemics are still ongoing when it comes to which word to use.  As I read it, I feel that DECOLONIAL would be the term I would like to use for my work. But as I continue to explore the subject, I may come back to this ... Her work was published in "New Voices in post-colonial studies" "Our use of language is under constant change, and this is perhaps nowhere truer than within the field of Postcolonial Studies (Britton, 1999; Ashcroft, 2002; Ramanathan, 2005). From ‘Third World’ to ‘Global South’, ‘people of colour’ to ‘racialised people’ , there are numerous examples of linguistic shifts, which once introduced, can feel eternal and natural. In this vein, this article will reflect on the extent to which discussions around language are important for resi...

 

In 2020-2021, with the project "The Untouched Collection" ,   I was researching a 19 th century collection of travelling books to collect illustrations of African nature and explore issues of de/colonisation. In winter 2021, as I visited Valencia's botanic gardens, it became obvious to me that botanic gardens would be my next research axis.  Today, I wanted to have a better idea of when and how these gardens appeared and as they are directly linked to colonial empires, I wanted to visualise the geographical developement of these empires through time.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_empire#European_colonial_empires