Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change, installation view @ STUK Leuven 2019, Photo by Kristof Vrancken
Seeds of Change
Maria Thereza Alves
Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alvez's artwork Seeds of Change spans over 20 years and various locations around the world. In it, she explores the way plant seeds spread around the world via colonial shipping, creating installations featuring plants traced to specific shipping routes. Alvez was born in 1961, so she is of a just later generation of artists – but you can see how the subjects and forms of land art continue in her work. The social angle, which seems absent in many monumental forms of land art, also emerges naturally here. Migration and colonialism are also about land.