Amitis Motevalli’s Golestan Revisited project, now in its exhibition phase, has several aims. One is to perform a revisionist botanical history to “decolonize the roses.” Motevalli explained to me that the flowers originated in an area of the world now described partly as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Iran, where she was born. Ancient Persia’s flowers could be described as successful plant emissaries of cultural exchange during a period of trading along the Silk Road. But Motevalli questions the way these plants were collected, specifically during the era of The Crusades, and the reasons they were cultivated. She sees the flowers as having been forcibly taken, because in their journeys to Europe and widespread adoption as symbols in art, literature and culture, they were hybridized and their offspring renamed, their cultural histories and their poetries erased. [Read more…]