DOC 234—34/2
Cotton ‘Gossypium’,
Black- Eyed Peas: Cowpea ‘Vigna unguiculata’ ;
Glass Beakers; Grow light
Hayes uses cotton—a cash crop historically linked to the transatlantic slave trade as a growing medium for the cowpea — a legume native to West Africa. Oral traditions speak of cowpeas being braided into the hair of ancestors during the Middle Passage — as investments of survival. Cotton, central to the economic wealth of the United States, was overfarmed through forced slave labour, leading to the degradation of southern soils. Yet, from the depleted soil, cowpeas emerge as capsules of hope – through biological nitrogen fixation.
Hayes’ work is informed by the agricultural innovations of George Washington Carver, an agricultural scientist born into slavery who advocated for the restoration of overworked soils through nitrogen-rich crops like the cowpea. This method, rooted in Indigenous West African practices, sought to reclaim the land from the ravages of monoculture. The beakers, lacking soil, challenge the notion of absence, echoing the experiences of Black Americans whose ancestral ties have been severed through forced displacement. Yet, the sprouting seeds suggest a relentless will to thrive, even in barren conditions. Today, the cowpea “Black Eyed Peas” are embedded in Black American traditions – for the artist, her family consumes a warm pot of Black Eyed Peas on New Years to bring hope, prosperity, and good fortune. As the cowpea, grows momentarily in cotton, the artist speaks on the cyclical nature of renewal and decay, echoing the fragility of unearthing ancestral history through erasure. The act of growing from depleted cotton becomes an assertion of agency and ecological resistance — the quiet space between decay and regeneration, where hope lingers in the potential for new life.
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