About this Event
This panel explores how immigrant and diasporic artists use plants and the garden, not only as a stand-in for place, but as a framework and vocabulary for thinking through migration: transplantation, adaptation, rooting, and preservation. Many plants and crops have traveled through colonial networks of trade, empire, and labor: the same infrastructures that have displaced communities and transformed ecologies. In this sense, botanical histories are inseparable from histories of migration, extraction, and colonial expansion.
Bringing together Bahar Behbahani, Rachelle Dang, and Sujin Lim, the panel explores distinct yet interconnected approaches to these themes: Behbahani’s practice draws on gardens as spaces where cultural memory, exile, and political histories converge, examining the relationships between landscape, migration, and identity; Dang investigates the movement of plants and agricultural knowledge across diasporic networks, revealing how cultivation is entangled with histories of labor, colonialism, and ecological transformation; and Lim’s work considers the material and symbolic lives of plants reflecting on care, adaptation, and the fragile conditions of belonging. Together, these artists demonstrate how plants are embedded within larger colonial structures that continue to shape histories of movement, classification, labor, and belonging.
This discussion also considers how taxonomic categories such as “native,” “non-native,” and “invasive” mirror the language and systems used to regulate the movement of people, determining who is perceived as belonging and who is marked as out of place. Botanical classification thus becomes part of a broader logic of indexing, surveillance, and control, exposing the ways scientific and political systems have long been intertwined. Plants become powerful metaphors for questioning borders, citizenship, and belonging while also highlighting the resilience of communities that continue to take root despite displacement.
About the Artists
is an artist, educator, and collaborator whose interdisciplinary work explores memory, erasure, adaptation, and the search for a sense of place. For over a decade, the Persian garden has served as a central study in her practice, bridging personal history with wider histories of power, climate, and the futurity of ancestral knowledge. A transplant from the land of sun, Iran, she has adapted New York as her home, where she is practicing hospitality and reciprocity through public art and gatherings.
@baharbehbahani | baharbehbahani.com
considers her own embodied experiences in relation to environmental, ancestral, and colonial histories, as they relate to the Pacific and Hawai`i, her birth place. Dang often draws on plant life and organic materials to explore how diasporic identity is shaped through processes of care and cultivation. In Botanical Cage and Perimeter Wall (2018) she reconstructs an 18th century shipping carrier designed to transport breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to England. Surrounded by ceramic breadfruit in various stages of decay, “this project of imperial botany had the end goal of cultivating breadfruit in the Caribbean to buttress plantation profits and to relieve environmental catastrophe and famine from monocropping sugar.” Botanical Cage and Perimeter Wall reiterates the relationships between violence, slavery and labor, along with the ecological legacies of colonialism.
@rachelledangstudio | rachelledang.com
Originally from Seoul, Korea, explores the emotional and ecological dimensions of place through site-specific installations, sculptures, and video works that reimagine landscapes as surreal, metaphorical spaces. Her research-based practice traces personal memories embedded in a site outward into ecological and geopolitical shifts, often through natural materials as carriers of memory and displacement. For her recent project at Wavehill, Memories in Red, shecreated an immersive environment using natural red pigment extracted from Rosa rugosa - a plant once native to Korea now extinct due to changing shorelines, it was brought to New York mid-19C to help with erosion along the shores of the Hudson River. Lim’s work reflects both the fragility of the flower’s natural habitat and its entanglement with histories of displacement.
@_sujinlim | sujinlim.com
About the Curator
Anna Khimasia, the Cynthia Wu Co-curator, is an independent curator and has curated exhibitions and performance events in both Canada and the United States. Her curatorial projects are often collaborative and focus on underrepresented voices and histories. She was the 2023–24 AIRspace Curator-in-Residence at Abrons Arts Center and is a co-founder of International Arrivals (IA), a NYFA-sponsored project supporting artists hailing from countries in conflict. She produces and hosts the IA podcast, which features conversations with international artists about displacement, migration, and transnational belonging. Recent publications include a new essay on Harold Offeh’s early performance video work and an assistant editor role for Kambui Olujimi: North Star, Meditations on Boundlessness. She has taught courses on contemporary art and performance at Carleton University, UCLA, and Rutgers University, where she is currently a lecturer. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) at Carleton University.
@annakhimasia_art
PARTNERS
(AAAinA) champions the cultural contributions of Asian communities in the U.S. and globally. Founded in 2009, AAAinA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching public understanding of the world through the collection, preservation, and sharing of knowledge around recent art from and of Asia. Our mission is to spark dialogue, support specialized research, and build community — with a focus on amplifying under-recognized art histories and art practice in Asia and the Asian diaspora.
THE BIENNIALis a nomadic platform that presents the work of immigrant artists across diverse formats, including exhibitions, public programs, and publishing. It engages broad national and international audiences while maintaining a strong presence in New York. Through its multi-venue and interdisciplinary approach, the biennial creates space for dialogue, visibility, and exchange, amplifying immigrant voices and fostering connections between artists, institutions, and the public. Founded in 2019 by Katya Grokhovsky, TIAB has showed more than 175 artists including Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Blanka Amezkua, Felipe Baeza, Marcelo Brodsky, Esperanza Cortés, Linnéa Gad, Maria Kulikovska, Raul de Lara, Jiaoyang Li and Jinjin Xu, Anina Major, Ana Mendieta, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, Anna Ting Möller, Yali Romagoza/Cuquita the Cuban Doll, Nida Sinnokrot, and Tariku Shiferaw. @theimmigrantartistbiennial
VISIT The full program for The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2026: Identity Card will be released in September 2026 on website. Everyone is welcome.
Image: Sujin Lim. Memories in Red. Installation. Photographed by Anabelle DeClement.
Event venue & nearby stays
Residency Unlimited, 360 Court Street, Brooklyn, United States
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