Jane Benson  
   


Happy Faux Flora, 2002
Artificial trees and plants, planters.

In 2002 the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the World Financial Center Arts and Events commissioned nine artists to create site-specific works for the World Financial Center, in celebration of it’s reopening after 9/11.

Happy Faux Flora involved the casual introduction of modified artificial trees and plants into the lobby World Financial Center. The store bought artificial trees were altered to look artificial, each leaf cut into an unnatural shape (triangles and rectangles etc.) to create unabashedly fake trees and a fantasy of future genetic mutations. Twice removed from their original context the plants were literally reinvented.

Read essay New Views- World Financial Center by Nuit Banai

Read essay Even The Plants Are Angry, by Sara Reisman for the catalogue accompanying Underbush, 2007 at the Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver.