The art of naming things that

A vast collaborative project staged over three cities confronts the colonisation of plants

Theatrum Botanicum is Swiss artist Uriel Orlow’s ever-morphing body of work, primarily looking at the political and historical agency related to plants. Staged in three cities in South Africa, it is a vast, multifaceted work, which uses film, sound, installation and photography to explore tensions involving nationalism and botanical diplomacy, as well as the forced dichotomy between Western medicine and indigenous practice.

“I was here on a short research trip,” says Orlow inside POOL on Voorhout Street in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, explaining the genesis of a work more than three years in the making.

“I went to the Mayibuye Archives in Cape Town and to the South African History Archive here. I happened to meet somebody for coffee in the café of the botanical gardens in Kirstenbosch. As I walked through, I noticed the labels of the plants and how most of the plant labels are in English or in Latin.

“It struck me that in South Africa, where there are 11 official languages, and even more that are not official, what does it mean to have English and Latin as the names of the plants in the botanical gardens? It’s connected to the whole colonial history and it’s connected to all these other things that I had been looking at in the archives. It’s like a prehistory of that.”

Orlow’s project, at least aspects of it, highlight the far-reaching act of naming as taking ownership. One of the sound installations that make up Theatrum Botanicum is called What Plants Were Called Before They Had Names.

Planting thought: Swiss artist Uriel Orlow questions the naming of plants which, despite being indigenous to South Africa, have European monikers. His exhibition uses film, sound, photography and video installation, such as The Fairest Heritage, to explore this colonial phenomenon