New York-based artist Joiri Minaya's Venus Flytrap was a site-specific, newly commissioned performance series and installation at Philadelphia's Bartram’s Garden last summer. Curated by writer and editor Dessane Lopez Cassell, the series reflected on the intertwined legacies of freedom, extraction, and ecology in North America's oldest surviving botanical garden. "From the posed elegance that starts the performance, Venus Flytrap grows into a carnivalesque frolic that ends with the performers receding into a large tree surrounded by sail-like colorful printed fabrics that the artist created at the city’s Fabric Workshop and Museum," Hyperallergic's Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian wrote about the series in his review in May of last year.
This exclusive film, co-directed by Joiri and filmmaker Xenia Matthews, documents the process of creating and performing this new work. The artist adds, “Beyond the straight-forward documentation of the process, this film also captures a multiplicitous 'process,' 'getting out of the shpiel,' rewiring and rewriting ideas I’ve worked through for several years into a version of where I’m at in relation to this land, this history and this diasporic experience, weaving in the voices of the multitalented curatorial, movement, textile, audio-visual and production collaborators with who helped shape Venus Flytrap through rich cross-pollination.”
“It was a thrill to co-direct this film with Joiri and have the camera capture her gaze as she navigated a process that was completely new and experimental,” says Matthews.
Produced by BlackStar Projects, major support for Joiri Minaya: Venus Flytrap was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the William Penn Foundation.