desertArtLAB: Center for Dryland Ecologies, 2017
SIGHTING/SITING CATCI IN SANTA BARBARA
Inspired by one of artist collective desertArtLAB’s first site visits to Santa Barbara —during which they learned that cacti are not permitted in City-owned, public, and/or community garden spaces— this project centered the sustenance, wisdom, and resistance offered by native dryland ecologies and the Indigenous, Native, and Latinx/e communities who have held deep relationships with these plants and ecologies for centuries.
Stocked with cactus clippings donated from Lotusland and Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, the artists —April Bojorquez and Matt Garcia— invited residents and passersby to share an offering in exchange for a cactus clipping to take home and plant. Offerings took the form of sharing stories or donating used items, such as headphones, a French press coffee maker, a toy ball, as well as gifting different plants, tools, and pots.
In this way, desertArtLAB’s project showcased community members’ existing knowledge of and relationships with native plants and ecologies, while also imagining and enacting alternative, community-based systems of value and exchange. Held in the parking lot of a local hardware and garden store, the weekend pop-up cacti swaps transformed the public space of one of the busiest corners of Santa Barbara’s Westside neighborhood.
desertArtLAB’s project also included a 3-week summer Drylands Ecology Field Camp for local youth and families. The Drylands Field Camp culminated in a community-designed celebration, Fería de la Tierra, which included a custom-fabricated inflatable pop-up installation in the form of a nopal cactus, designed by the artists and commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
Artist Matt Garcia of desertArtLAB (right) with members of UCSB’s American Indian and Indigenous Garden Alliance during an early site visit to Santa Barbara in 2016.