Radical Botany – the politics of flowers

Event: Group Exhibition
Curators: Susan Bright (UK) & Hedy Van Erp (NL)
Commissioner: Alice Austen House
Venue: Alice Austen House Museum, New York
Dates: 6th June – 22nd Aug 2026

A group show with approximately 14 photographs, 2 videos, books and vitrine works and a publication. Five works on paper by Wendy McMurdo

Exhibition description:

‘Flowers have always been political. From the 1637 tulip market crash – history’s first speculative bubble – to today’s environmental crises, flowers reflect urgent economic, social, and ecological concerns. This exhibition showcases contemporary artists who use flowers as their primary subject to address pressing political issues affecting us all. The works span diverse themes including colonial history, immigration, sexism, racism, gender politics, homophobia and class. The artists employ flowers both symbolically and literally – through formal arrangements, seed planting, decay, and disruption – to express deeply human struggles. By centering the flower, these artists reveal how this seemingly delicate subject is never merely decorative but carries profound weight; across a range of media, the exhibition demonstrates that flowers are sites of labor, commodification, memory, and resistance.

Note from curators Susan Bright & Hedy van Erp:
For us, Alice Austen House is the perfect venue for this exhibition as it intertwines history, cultural activism, and botany. Flowers have historically been entangled in systems of power, capital, and control, serving as contested sites where politics, economics, and ecology converge. At a time of increasing political unrest, the artists in Radical Botany reveal that delicate flowers often carry profound weight and can be potent tools for resistance. Nestled in a beautiful garden, the museum not only highlights Alice Austen’s legacy but also fosters community engagement and education, making it an ideal setting to explore these critical themes.’

A publication of the same name was produced to mark the exhibition. 48 pages, 25 colour illus. ISBN: 979-8-9888148-8-7

Artists: Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou (BNN), Cristine Crebas (DK), Lauren Fields (USA), Jeroen Jongellen (NL), Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker (USA), Justine Kurland (USA), Linder (UK), Wendy McMurdo (UK), Pipilotti Rist (CH), Dagmar van Weeghel (NL) & Remsen Wolff (USA/NL)

Retrieved: https://aliceausten.org/17350-2/
As part of Radical Botany – the politics of flowers, I exhibited five works on paper from my larger 2023 project The Radical Road. In 2023, I started to collect plants that grew freely alongside The Radical Road which runs alongside Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. Aware of the revolutionary history of the path (it was built by the unemployed weavers defeated in the 1820 Radical War) I decided to collect the plants which ground along the path in order to document a period in radical history that has left little visible trace. As Glasgow based historian Alan Riach has observed, the Radical Road itself represents both the ‘relation for social justice and the assertion of the earth itself’. It seemed to me too that the social history of the Crags was inextricably bound up with the natural world and in documenting the flora that persists alongside the Radical Road and I wanted to explore the tension between these two things.

Wendy McMurdo, 2026