Big Rhizome Lover - Behind The Artwork.
Rhizome originates from the ancient greek word (rhízōma) meaning 'mass of roots’. In botany a rhizome is the main stem system of the plant that runs horizontally underground in an organic fashion, through the soil sending out new vertical shoots up from the top of the nodes. Rhizome root-stalks can be found in the potato, bamboo and the venus fly trap.
The term Rhizome cannot be mentioned without citing the complex, radical works of post modern French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in, A Thousand Plateaus. This is a very challenging and complex read that would take me years of research to fully comprehend, the book is presented in a non linear format with no beginning or end or traditional structure. In simple terms the world wide web is often described as a rhizomatic model. Van der Klei, Alice. “Repeating the Rhizome.” SubStance, vol. 31, no. 1, 2002, pp. 48–55, https://doi.org/10.2307/3685805. Accessed 24 Apr. 2022.
My point of entry into the text makes me think Deleuze and Guattari are challenging the reader to approach life in more abstract ways resulting in more surprising outcomes. Embracing human complexities and being in a constant state of flux or becoming, using mapping rather than photography (replication) to navigate through the world.
The artwork Big Rhizome Lover, depicts two abstract figures moving organically in a nomadic, non-linear fashion across the page like the rhizome stem system, where eventually the two figures meet, connect unexpectedly, by chance.
Big Rhizome Lover is printed on a warm, natural, bamboo, sustainable paper range. With bright turquoise highlights, rich forest greens and deep punchy blacks for contrast. Fresh new prints in stock, check out the rest of the collection via the Shop tab on the homepage.
