Invasive Apothecary: Healing In Times of Ecological Destruction and Runaway Viruses
OSGF
Q&A With Alyssa Dennis
Where have you been the past few months?
It’s a very strange feeling but when you make the conscious decision to understand and work to reverse human generated environmental destruction a so called ‘black swan’ event like COVID doesn’t seem so rare. In some ways I feel as if I have been training for this kind of pivotal Earth response for a long time coming. As I work to finish two new series of drawings under my Invasive Apothecary project, I am also putting the final touches on a three-year medical herbalism program which focuses on Ayurveda, Chinese and European Eclectic healing modalities. At their core, these ancient forms of healing are active semblances of listening to the land. A 1984 animated film called Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind depicts a human induced toxic jungle dominated by giant insects or “super bugs”. I can’t help but think of this classic story as a metaphor of our current state in, which our world has been so ravaged by disconnection from the land that an invisible virus can disable many of civilization’s destructive forces in a matter of weeks.
In this time of self-isolation and introspection, engaging with the land where we live, in any capacity, can bring about exponential benefit. In an urban environment like NYC, where I live, invasive plants dominate to the chagrin of many yet carry an important ecological message. Sixteen out of the 17 most problematic invasive plants listed by the NYC Parks Department have been consumed as food and medicine by cultures around the globe since time immemorial. Eight of these species have been utilized in traditional Chinese medical pharmacology for thousands of years, and three species were used to treat active infections of SARS in 2002 and as I write this are currently being used to treat COVID-19 within Chinese hospitals. These species include; Morus alba, Lonicera japonica, Phragmites australis. However, it is not just invasive plants that have been overlooked in the West. Despite a persistent cultural obsession with the visual appearance or presence of plants our relationship in a medicinal sense has been grossly undermined. This kind of abstraction coupled with the degradation of traditional healing has been pursued by a capitalist medical system that negligently lacks adequate forms of preventive care, which, in the United States, disempowers us at the benefit of what WHO identified in 2019 as the highest earning pharmaceutical industry in the world. Herbal medicine’s most effective use is not necessarily treating advanced pathology but in reading preexisting conditions along with physical, mental and emotional patterns of the body in order to prevent pathology. A fear-based “war” against invasive species, insects or pandemic viruses like COVID-19 isn’t nearly as effective a solution as increasing the health and vitality of the terrain, both in our individual bodies and in our shared body of land, air and water. We are sick because our relationship to the earth is sick. In seeking solutions to healing our world and runaway plants or viruses I am continuing to ask: what is our individual and collective relationship with the land?
Historically, what ideas, issues, and subject matter(s) have inspired your work?
My practice has retained a traditional approach such as drawing, sculpture and photography although I have been inspired by many of the land artists of the 1970’s. The more I became interested in the work of Gordon Matta Clark, Nancy Holt, Agnes Denes, Robert Smithson and later Andrea Zittel I turned my attention to acquiring very practical skills of land care and sustainable access to basic necessities. At the time this felt more poignant than theorizing within an art form. So, in 2006 I traveled to the mid-west to take a series of workshops in strawbale building and adobe brick & plaster work. Soon after my work at the Solar Energy International, in Colorado, I got a full-time job in straw-bale construction and green roof installation. Later I became certified in permaculture and plant medicine. All of these experiences have inspired the ideas and outcome of the work I do today. My ultimate goal has always been how do I absorb, contextualize and then share the necessary skills of learning how-to live-in symbiosis with this Earth.
What creative projects are you currently working on?
Conventional practices of invasive plant removal are one of our greatest forms of food and medicine waste. In NYC alone, over 170 public invasive species removal events were held in 2018, allowing thousands of pounds of viable plant material to be carried off to our already overflowing landfills. As our economy crashes, people lose their livelihoods and social and economic disparities grow, this kind of waste is something we can no longer afford to disregard. My Invasive Apothecary project continues to educate the public about viable abundant local food and medicine, while also aiming to combat the treat of xenophobia surrounding these non-native species. Ultimately, this project strives to build a sacred economy which stands up to the excesses of greed that perpetrate unjust social, environmental and political preexisting conditions all across the United States. Urban Artemis is a new series of works on paper which are a poetic interpretation of my endeavors with the Invasive Apothecary. These works visualize a kind of mythical construction site that is a reconfiguring or rebuilding of how we interact with and care for the land and ultimately our own bodies. These works speak to the roots of climate change via old growth forest depletion. Urban Artemis is protector and caretaker of the wild, aka the biodiverse. She is a medium between the non-human and the over- acculturated industrial landscape. She can see into both our current patriarchal economy but also the new- found sacred economy. She is a medium of mutualism and reciprocity and is surrounded by urban invasive plant medicine which are being utilized in COVID treatment. Her spirit guide is Crow who is as dark as fertile moist soil yet has wings to oversee the world. Together they are both seer, interpreter and messenger of the language of the natural world. The second series of drawings are botanical sketches of invasive plant medicine which will ultimately be executed using handmade paper composed of invasive plant material. Stay tuned.
How has your artistic practice changed during this time?
I don’t think my practice has changed all that much. COVID has simply confirmed and solidified more than ever the path that I’ve been on for quite some time. My ultimate goal when deciding to study clinical herbalism was to find a way to make my herbal healing practice my art practice. I now feel that having an herbal practice is an ultimate form of an art practice. I will continue to articulate this in the work that I do one-on-one with people and through the other more traditional artistic mediums. As Ted Kaptchuk mentions in The Web That Has No Weaver, “The arts in China were nourished by the same naturalist and Taoist thought that fed Chinese philosophy and medicine.” Both art and herbalism require detailed assessments of current social, political, environmental conditions, multi-leveled pattern recognition and creative problem solving. Stay tuned to see how it all unfolds.
Has COVID-19 shifted how you think about the natural world?
I am reminded of Nina Simone when she said…..“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptures, poets, musicians. I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That to me is my duty. At this crucial time in our lives when everything is so desperate. When every day is a matter of survival, I can’t think you can help but be involved. ……We will mold and shape this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.”