The beauty in the ‘backstage’
“Everything I have learned has been through art, but not really about art, about everything else.”
~Natasha Wheat
Natasha Wheat is an interdisciplinary artist from Ojai who works through various mediums of art to challenge structures and hierarchies, drawing the viewer’s attention to underlying social issues and the collapse of human belief systems. In her nine-month residency, Natasha is interested in exploring and drawing attention to the ‘backstage’ – the part of the Garden that isn’t easily visible to visitors.
“When I saw the botanical garden for the first time, it’s very much a utopia. It’s a curated, beautiful space that tells a specific narrative about other parts of the planet, about different places,” she said. “I wanted to see everything that gets pulled out when the gardeners are here. Where is everything that wasn’t pretty enough or was the wrong kind of plant? I wanted to see all of that and that’s what I’m working on in the studio space.”
This theme of the backstage, or heterotopia, is the thread that runs through Natasha’s work. The heterotopia, as Natasha describes it, is “the place where we store undesirable bodies so that our utopia can exist.” The heterotopias that Natasha is exploring at Taft are the burn piles. She is documenting the plants from the burn pile by tracing them to create a composition. From there, she will return them to the pile. She shared that some writing will be a part of this exhibition.
Natasha is also weaving a larger social conversation into her residency and signs of it (pun intended) can be seen when visiting her at the Historic Art Studio. She has on display, a neon of a hand holding coca leaves – an indigenous plant native to South America.
“I’m taking the burn pile outside of the context of just Taft, and thinking about enemy or illegal plants, and people being criminalized and spending time in jail because they grew or engaged with a certain plant” she said, referring to coca – an indigenous plant that is used in many sacred ceremonies and is a key ingredient in cocaine production. “There is a strain of coca that has come from the jungle called Boliviana negra They think it’s from farmers crossbreeding the coca that wouldn’t die from the roundup herbicide, being sprayed from above. But it’s like the hero of my story and is a really intriguing idea of the resistance fighter being a plant.”
Natasha has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include The Detroit Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Museum of Folk and Craft Art San Francisco, and the Berkeley Art Museum. In addition to her studio practice, she is an art educator and founder of Project Grow, an art studio and urban farming program based in Portland, Oregon, that employed developmentally disabled adults and investigated the intersection of food, value systems, society, and physical contact with the earth as a form of de-institutionalization.
When asked what she is looking forward to during her nine-month residency at the Gardens, she replied, “The wild space, the undeveloped space … and getting to know the 200-acre wildlife corridor.”
An exhibition of works developed during Natasha’s residency will open at the annual Art in Nature Fundraiser on May 6th and remain on display through June 2023.
Copywriting: DeAnna Carpenter @shewhobuilds
Photos: Marc Alt @marcaltphoto
Graphics: Louise Sandhaus @lulusandhaus