ART > The Silent Archive (group show), Inverleith House, The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, January - May 2024

Detail from Preliminary Research [Works in Progress]

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH [works in progress] takes over two of RBGE's display cases, and gathers elements from the RBGE Collections, including from the archive, cuttings and herbarium. The work relates to a longer term writing project looking at a range of botanists and the relationship of the RBGE to different African countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and some of the botanists who travelled there. Stories and interests intersect across decades and raise fascinating questions about colonial power, influence and theft, as well as knowledge and how it is gathered, shared and owned, and the invisibilised indigenous knowledge that lies at the root of much western medicine.