plantling a promise

Plantling a Promise
Site-Specific Installation, The Works Festival, Edmonton, 2022

Plantling a Promise was a participatory installation focused on exchange, responsibility, and public engagement with ecological relations. Over several days, I invited visitors to take home a young sunflower. Each plant functioned as a living component of the artwork, offered not as a product but as part of a reciprocal interaction. In return, participants were asked to articulate a promise, an intention of care or attentiveness toward plants, trees, local ecosystems, or other more-than-human relations.

Participants wrote their promises on fabric using ink and paint. These were then attached to the ribs of a geodesic dome installed on the festival grounds. As submissions accumulated, the dome became a temporary structure composed of written commitments, representing a collective record of environmental intentions.

The project examined how simple actions, receiving a plant, writing a commitment, placing it in a shared public structure, can support dialogue about ecological responsibility. The process emphasized direct engagement, where each exchange prompted reflection on how care might be enacted in everyday contexts beyond the festival.

Plantling a Promise aligns with my ongoing research into participatory ecological art practices. The work situates public interaction, reciprocal gestures, and plant-based engagement as methods for exploring how individuals and communities negotiate responsibility, stewardship, and shared environmental futures.