Plants stood witness to the human atrocities that took place during the Atlantic slave trade. 🌱 🌱 "Whenever people were transported on sailing merchant ships ballast was required as counterweight in order to stabilize the vessel because of the movement of bodies getting on and off...Perhaps that is why Caribbean coral sand used as ballast was discarded in the harbor of New York...New York would grow to become the country's most important harbor and by the 1850s it dominated the international illegal slave trade to the American South, Brasil and Cuba." 🌱 🌱 Art is power, and this exhibit is subtlety powerful. Maria Thereza Alves expands our concepts of and relationships to plants (native vs exotic) and colonization, migration, slavery and city-building. . . . #levels #art #botany #imperialism #colonialism #horticulture #migration #mapmaking #globalism #landscape #ballast #urbanism #celosia #flax #amaranth #geranium #mugwort (at New School)