My solo exhibition 'The earth laughs in flowers' is on view at Niru Ratnam Gallery, 12/09/26 - 25/10/26, London.
The show is named after a line in the poem Hamatreya by American settler, poet, essayist, minister and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson. The poem is a critique of human arrogance and the illusion of land ownership, suggesting that humans are temporary occupants of the Earth, ultimately belonging to it. The poem’s “Earth Song” uses the voices of the land to convey that it endures, while the landowners who believe they control it are merely “asleep beneath their grounds”.
I painted late summer flowers that grow on the Wanstead Flats near my home in east London. Common Milkwort, Dog’s Mercury, Lady’s bedstraw, Common Mallow, Piss weed, Common Yarrow, Poison Hemlock, White bryony, Camomile; all with their stories, uses and magics.
