Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani highlight the movement of individuals, plants, and animals at the hands of empire in Home/Land at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, curated by environmentalist and photographer Zoraida Lopez-Diago.
Samantha Box constructs altars to the interconnection between plant and human life, with a visual vocabulary drawn from her diasporic Jamaican household. In “Construction #1” (2018), a plastic carton of guavas overflows onto a table with a half-eaten or rotten banana and pomegranate, fruit popular in Jamaican cuisine. The color and contrast of both the photographs and their installation — Box frames her pieces with a colored glass whose tint glows on every wall they are put against — are so lush they look almost ripe.
During the exhibition walk-through, Box said that these works allude to early Flemish still lifes, which promoted the romanticization of foreign fruits, coinciding with the commodification of colonial goods. In “Construction #1” (2018) Box subverts the convention of objectifying Black characters as backdrop, as in Jurian van Streek’s “Still Life with Moor and Porcelain Vessels” (1665–75), by placing herself in the frame, looking directly at the camera while biting into a guava. Whereas such compositions are typically meant to portray the offerings of colonial luxury, she reclaims agency as both artist and subject by depicting herself consuming those offerings. In other works, such as the quiet “An Origin” (2020), in which a vegetable shrouded in white lace grows a new stem, Box highlights the price tags of certain foods to highlight the commodification of all life through colonial projects, illustrating the link between a dependency on goods and the extraction of materials, plants, and people from their homes.
A chick extends its neck to feed from a tweezer holding a plump seed in Sheida Soleimani’s “Safekeeping” (2023). Behind the chick, a torn backdrop reveals snakeskin beneath. Soleimani is also a bird rehabilitator; alongside Box’s odes to the natural materials of Jamaica, her avian works are situational narratives about memory, with certain motifs repeating across works like prayers. Many of her compositions, for instance, are trompe-l’œil tableaus formed with collaged photographs that are infused with the second-hand memory of her parents escaping Iran. “Khooroos named Manoocher” (2021) features the artist’s father. His face is covered in paper the color of sky, and he holds a chicken surrounded by a tableau of leaves, drawings, and fabric. The wood of the frame is stamped, like a crate ready to ship, as if the memories it contains are marked for either commodification or release.
Taken together, these artists construct alternative landscapes of their diasporic homelands: Soleimani, through the memories of her parents, and Box, by replanting the fruit of her ancestors so that they grow again in altars.
Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani: Home/Land continues at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York (126 Baxter Street, Chinatown, Manhattan) through December 21. The exhibition was curated by Zoraida Lopez-Diago.
