Co-supervised by Christian Ernsten and Darian Meacham from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Maastricht University, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (Tamarind Rosetti and Stephen Wright) and plant breeder Andrea Ghedina, Hoon brings forth OLERACEA, a research project that approaches agricultural practice as a site of cultural practice and academic inquiry.
Taking the specie Brassica Oleracea (cabbage in all its forms) as a focal point, the project examines cultivation, selection and generation as cultural and creative gestures. OLERACEA questions the generative capacity of highly professional and capital intensive breeding projects by sidelining it with a participatory, creative and open-ended methodology.
Rooted at Hoeve Kesselt (Riemst), the project embraces open-ended, experimental breeding processes. By combining artistic research with ecological plant breeding, OLERACEA seeks to expand both the genetic diversity of cabbages and the cultural ways in which they are valued, imagined, and understood.
Ultimately, the research asks how plant breeding might function as a form of artistic and relational practice, and how such an approach can contribute to more sustainable, diverse, and culturally rich agricultural futures and expand eco-ststemic visions of human and other-than-human culinary and artistic agency and autonomy.
