Please join us for a conversation around Zomia Garden, our latest CCA Single, with our 2023–2024 Emerging Curator Yutong Lin and invited cross-disciplinary scholar Yan Zhou.

In Zomia Garden, Lin traces the legacy of botanical exploration in an area of the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountain chain known as Zomia, a term coined in 2002 to refer to the largest region of inhabitants not governed by a nation-state. The variable Himalayan topographies sustain an extraordinary variety of flora and fauna and, over the years, have inspired mythical imaginaries of bountiful lands. Lin, an artist and curator, returned to the region—her hometown—to retrace the travels of Joseph F. Rock, a famous plant hunter in the 1920s whose approach to botany, landscape, and culture was transformed by his encounters with Indigenous Nakhi guides and their language and rituals. Juxtaposing her photographs and itinerary alongside Rock’s, Lin untangles the histories of colonialism, mythmaking, and resistance woven into the hunt for rare plant species and botanical knowledge.

The book is a result of Lin’s participation in the CCA Emerging Curator program, which aims to take the institution’s curatorial work into unexplored territories.

On this occasion, Yutong Lin and Yan Zhou will discuss botanical and colonial histories in the Zomia region as well as Lin’s intersecting archival, artistic, and editorial approach. The discussion will be moderated by Victoria Addona, Editor, CCA Publications.