The Fenway Victory Gardens, off season

The Fenway Victory Gardens, off season is a location-based documentary project observing the human interactions and interventions with the space - a portraiture of the area of community gardens in Fenway, Boston during winter. It imagines and explores the coexistence of decay and revival under an obscure and curious presence of the historical wonderland, an estranged urban oasis.

Victory Gardens, initially known as War Gardens, emerged during World War I while commercially produced crops and vegetations were supplied to the military and supported the US warfare. Hence, founded in 1942 during World War II, the Fenway Victory Gardens, among many others, was established to encourage civilians to grow their own fruits and vegetables supplementing their rations. These gardens would often utilize public parks, private residences, and other available community plots that allowed local gardeners to contribute their labor while feel empowered by the produce, thus, incorporating the gardens as a part of daily life on the Home Front. By the end of the war, there were almost 20 million Victory Gardens of different scales in the US, supplying over 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by the people.

Shortly after the war, Victory Gardens faded out as the economy and commerce rapidly revived, leaving the Fenway Victory Gardens to be one of the only two remaining operating Victory Gardens in the country, as well as the only one that has remained at its original location.

Now, after being turned into an area of community gardens, the Fenway Victory Gardens is indeed an outstanding spectacle of the city. Traces of patriotism and morale still scatters among the gardens, next to the narrow footpaths, between the tea tables, and under the winter sun. As gardeners set home for the off season, leaving tools and marks of human existence behind, the plants take over the space. I admire their capability of finding an intricate balance with their space, alongside human artifacts and the city lights from far away. I can now see the branches, the stems, and the decaying leaves - they are the veins and the skin to the land. The plants have never appeared more alive. Without the overwhelming attention and flamboyance of summer, the plants only find their place, truly, in the freezing air.

Like a quiet song of the forgotten history, presence of the Fenway Victory Gardens has long been distorted into a cluster of ambiguity under a veil. I look at it just like how I look at the grains on a film strip or the scratches on a record. I embrace its queerness. It was never lost in translation.

Reference: fenwayvictorygardens.org/history/; Kallen, Stuart A. (2000). The War at Home. San Diego: Lucent Books. ISBN 1-56006-531-1.

wet cyanotypes with water color, 4.5”x12”

duo channel video installation, 00:04:48

2023