Bulletin 02

EM Joseph
A Wandering Atlas
2019
inkjet print

Em Joesph’s piece responds to the site of the gallery itself. It was a part of the exhibition Landscape as Dreamscape at citygroup Project Space. A Wandering Atlas is part of a series of photographs of plant growth on sidewalks, abandoned lots, and construction sites throughout the city. It explores these budding indications of the natural world which are either hidden from the public experience or that elude to classified elements of’ the city’ or ‘landscape.’ At the same time, the work grapples with the difficulties of identifying plant growth in these areas, pairing imagery of city plants with a list of possible corresponding botanic identifications. The impulse to classify generates thoughts about the right to freedom in the city, which is built, owned, and partitioned. The image chosen for this poster for Citygroup was taken at the boundary of Lion’s Gate Field and Forsyth Street, just across from the Citygroup gallery, thus holding site-specific significance to the Citygroup location and the neighborhood itself.