Red Weevil Blues
The works in the series Red Weevil Blues begin from an archive I compiled over several years of urban wanderings centered around observation of the palm trees of Athens. Flaneurs of the 19th century often referred to themselves as botanists of the sidewalk, adopting this approach, I extended botanical observation to include things that were not necessarily plants or animals. The works chronicle the story of the red palm weevil, a bug inadvertently imported in the period of the Athens Olympic Games, that decimated the palm trees of Athens. The palm tree adorns various 19th century civic buildings of Athens that are both symbols of power and historic sites of resistance. The works traverse this recent history via the palm tree, documenting various types of voids and deconstructions of the 20th and 21st century: holes made in the trees by the bug itself, burnt pavement from riots, archival footage from uprisings, bullet holes and graffiti from urban warfare. The works take their title from an American blues song about another bug blight, the bo weevil that decimated cotton crops in the reconstruction era South of the United States, and are inspired by the complexity of the story that the song tells.
