Digital Gardens (2022)

Digital Gardens was a group exhibition that invited artists to respond to how we nurture digital spaces, and cultivate our own spaces online; yet also consider that when spaces are defined online, who gets to define them, and what are the politics around those borders? Gardens have borders and walls; they are designated spaces for cultivating an aesthetic, and for claiming land which is not necessarily functional. They have historically also been symbols of colonialism and class divisions the world over – tools for cultivating a visible hierarchy.

A digital garden is an online space, which exists at the intersection of a notebook and a blog, and where ideas are cultivated in a public realm, based on specific themes or topics. They are spaces that have been nurtured and cared for by their author, possibly a space where the author can retreat and explore themselves openly and freely. These spaces could be described as safe havens from the overwhelming nature of the broader internet. Unlike a blog, where linear content can quickly become outdated and act more as an archive over time, a digital garden is a networked, evergreen space where ‘digital gardeners’ keep on editing and refining their notes. Conceptually, this could be extended to social media – to your Instagram page, which gets revisited and revised, linked and tagged to other accounts, content, and information. The internet is not without borders, barriers, and politics, which requires continuous reviewing, critiquing and revising, in a similar way to a garden.

The artists responded in a variety of ways to this exhibition proposal, employing different types of technology, such as interactive CCTV cameras, AR-triggered paintings, multiple screens, digital visual video essays, and combining natural materials and projections. Each artist expanded on their usual mediums using the digital, referencing the internet and our behaviours online, and questioning how we critically engage in that space.

Artists participating in Digital Gardens were: