UNLEASHING

Photographing moss, the first plant form, Marion Wilson celebrates deeper ways of seeing that look to more respectful engagement with the greater environment. Formerly a painter, she applies gel to mylar; the ghost of this image is visible beneath her large-format, translucent photographic prints of an organism so small it survives only on dew. Interested in botany’s scientific and metaphorical attributes alike, Wilson studied for over a year with bryophyte expert Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. But her durational efforts expand beyond the gallery and outside the lab. She started MossLab/The Mobile Field Station—a renovated RV—and drove it from Syracuse, NY, to Miami, collecting moss specimens and setting up “first looking encounters” along the way. Wilson invites viewers to pay attention to the over-looked timelessness and omnipresence of moss in a project that parallels her social practice of working with marginalized neighborhoods and populations. A place of democratized looking, the viewing space and lab become one.