Corinne Silva: Garden State

In Garden State, artist Corinne Silva uses photographic and sound installations to examine how gardens and planting are fertile terrain for ideological struggle and the colonisation of territory.

From 2010 to 2013, Silva worked on two projects between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Wounded and Gardening the Suburbs examine how the Israeli state uses tactical landscaping to exert control over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Taking the viewer through national parks and suburban gardens, Silva’s artwork reflects on how gardening can be used to mark out and progressively expand territory, as well as to encourage the Israeli population to spread and settle, to make roots and grass over divergent historical narratives.

The artist’s unique photographic language translates and re-maps the Israeli-Palestinian landscape. Positioned between the material and the imaginative, the work encourages the viewer to construct their own reading of the landscape.