Naida Osline: ‘Botany of Transcendence: Mythic Plants through the Lens’

An Invitation Into an Unsettled Universe

It is no secret that the living world is dying all around us: Our own human species successfully eliminates between 24 to 273 other species per day. These numbers are quite sobering, especially in the face of shifting weather patterns brought on by global warming. I would argue that Naida Osline, whose radiant photographs are now on view at MOAH (Lancaster Museum of Art and History), could be described as a renegade visual historian, or at the very least an archivist for the end of days.

Her exhibition, aptly titled, Botany of Transcendence, represents a rich and luminous exploration into the mysticism of living organisms, including plants and all manner of fungi. The word “fungi” conjures images of Lewis Carroll’s famed, Alice in Wonderland, which many critics now believe documents the power of psychedelic drugs. We will never know for sure if this was Carroll’s intention, but like him, Osline offers us a fantastical and gorgeously hybridized world where anything is possible.

Alcabenzi Mushrooms

With these images, I would also argue that Osline, though utilizing modern technology and complex photographic processes, deeply engages with the past, specifically referencing 17^th century Dutch masters, including Rembrandt,Vermeer and Frans Hals. Those Golden Age works characteristically lacks the idealization and love of splendor typical of most Baroque work, and instead reflects the quietude and inherent traditions of Realism. Though not obviously referential, Osline’s photographic studies within each of her disparate and interconnected series reflect the same deliberate sense of tranquility, while also imaginatively expressing bold new worlds, albeit small and largely unnoticed by the majority of people on this planet. If nothing else, Osline proves once and for all that plants do indeed have an undisputed inner life.

Poppyhead

The exhibition contains four distinct yet interconnected series, including Visionary Plants, Tattooed Tobacco, Fluorescence and Poppyhead, each of which posits a complex relationship between the hidden histories of plants and our own cultural status. Within each, Osline explores the artifice of beauty, touching on subjects as varied as vaping, homeopathy and colonialism. Perhaps the most theatrical of these series is Visionary Plants, where Osline has deliberately and poetically “curated” her imagery to reflect our uniquely strange socio/political moment. This series in particular focuses on Osline’s relationships to the plants she grows in pots around her home and garden.

She then digitally assembles the disparate photographs – taken over months – into a final composition, each iteration including upwards of between 20 to 80 separate photographs. The images are lush and sometimes unsettling as each plant appears to float above another completely different slandscape. In Borrachero (Brugmansia), (2019), a bundle of lilting trumpet-like flowers hangs over a strangely serene ocean replete with a group of people who appear stranded in the middle of the ocean. The people have dark skin, which could further suggest that they are immigrants attempting to cross the sea in search of a better life. Given Trump’s recent and horrendous implementation of immigration crackdowns, this piece in has a new-found prescience. Tattooed Tobacco also touches on political tropes and brings to mind our country’s centuries of colonialism. Here, Osline functions as a kind of renegade tattoo artist, explaining that the “manipulation takes place on the leaves at the end of the growth cycle,” wherein she then creates temporary tattoos on the leaves themselves before she has dried them. The work is reminiscent of Kara Walker’s explorations of race, gender, stereotypes, and identity in her large-scale installations.

Florescence No. 11

The Fluorescence series is probably the most visually formal, as each image forms a more obvious and associative translation of the posited human/animal relationship alive at the core of Osline’s practice. The relationships here constitute tenuous and sometimes antithetical hybrids. The Poppyhead series is probably the most enigmatic and disturbing. Osline has photographed transected opium poppy seed pods shown weeping or bloodied in much the same way an open wound might appear if left untreated. This work specifically brings to mind the opioid crisis in this country, but rather than suggest a solution, the work stands as a continual reminder of our country’s disillusionment when it comes to helping people with serious addictions.

Indian Tobacco

Finally, the images in Chasing Clouds read as a visual mapping of modern longing and transcendence. In each, vapor clouds transmogrify into other unworldly shapes, integrating human faces that appear to dissolve into the surrounding cloud-scapes. Are these ghosts or misbegotten apparitions seeking union with the physical world, or simply traces of human longing hung momentarily on the air? Either way, Osline invites us into her beautifully unsettled universe with open arms.

Cover image: Tattooed Tobacco; all images courtesy of Lancaster Museum of Art and History