Escaped Exotics is a series of short films and printed publications uncovering histories and potentials latent in the invasive plant species living and growing in the interstices of South Florida’s urban spaces.
Invasive plant species dominate the landscape of South Florida in numbers unseen elsewhere in North America.
Introduced invasive plants are inextricably linked to the history of human development and migration.
Many notorious invasives possess anatomical particularities that humans have utilized for centuries in medicine, culture and economy in their region of origin and spread.
Plants are introduced to Florida's landscape to assist in remaking infrastructures and furnishing aesthetic visions of pan-Tropicalism.
Because the very anatomical traits that allow invasive plants to dominate new ecosystems are often the context for their arrival, invasive species emerge as physical traces mapping a region’s history of development and humans’ desires for alteration.
Escaped Exotics exposes ontologies hidden in the commonplace bodies of invasive plants.