Nature As A Muse, Julia Barbosa Landois

Julia Barbosa Landois makes videos, performances, and works on paper that tease profundity and absurdity from the everyday and examine the tension between the intimate and the public. FREE CRADLE is a video poem about caretaking, inspired by oak galls and narrated in her voice. 

“Spherical galls, often found on and under live oak trees, are made by tiny cynipid wasps. Their stinging egg deposit prompts the tree to build, from its own flesh, a tiny home to protect the insect’s growing larva. I see this as one of countless everyday acts of generosity in nature. This video is part of a larger series about human relationships with the non-human world and what’s left to future generations. Figs, tree stumps, and oak galls summon narratives on survival, care, porous body boundaries, and death as fertile stopover through unexpected moments in built and quasi-natural environments. “