Olu Ogunnaike: London Plain | Frieze
Show: London Plain
Publication: Frieze
Publication URL: Olu Ogunnaike’s Radical Revival of London Plane Trees
"Ogunnaike revives these felled plane trees only to ask us to uproot them once more. In contributing to this cyclical process of planting and uprooting we confront questions about our own culpability regarding the gentrification of our cities and the treatment of nature as disposable. ‘Radical’, as political activist Angela Davis noted in Women, Culture & Politics (1989), ‘simply means grasping things at the root.’ As we clasp the cast-bronze crowbar and wood-crafted mallet, we become aware of our agency in resisting homogenization: we too can overturn a deeply ingrained system and expose what lies underneath."