Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library in London. It displays a mixture of medical artifacts and original artworks exploring “ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art”. A current exhibition, entitled Rooted Beings, explores the world of plants and fungi. This book has been published in conjunction with the exhibition, and presents the ideas of a collection of artists, writers, researchers, biologists and cultural and human rights activists.
Rooted Beings invites you to “embark on a meditative reflection on the world of plants and fungi”. It looks at what we might learn from plant behaviour, and the way colonial expeditions have impacted on the exploitation of natural resources and indigenous knowledges in different places around the world.
Without the joy of actually going to the exhibition (which I would do if I was in London), this book is a thoroughly enlightening read. There is a lovely mix of content. The first chapter is titled Vegetal Transmutation (Eduardo Navarro and Michael Marder), and it instructs the reader to ground with the earth, breathe and generally think like a plant. Once you have got your head in the right space, then this is the kind of book you can dip in and out of as you wish.
It’s an eclectic collection. There’s an exploration of the origin of plants – algae meets fungi to evolve into mycorrhizal relationships, which are fundamental to the life of plants on the land. In Bitter Barks, Kim Walker and Nataly Allasi Canales explore the history and the future of the Fever Tree (think quinine and the treatment of malaria). They consider the need for conservation and protection of this tree in it’s native lands. The theme of colonialism and exploitation is examined again in Upirngasaq /Arctic Spring by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, writing from her Innuit community in Northern Quebec. One of my favourite stories is Wilder Flowers by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, who looks at landscape art and painting.
All of these stories are tied together with their connection to earth/soil/dirt and nature. With climate change now being given the attention it needs, this may make you start to look more closely at the world around you.
Reviewer: Rachel White
Wellcome Collection/Allen & Unwin
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