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Online

Inspired by the concept of war gardens, a grassroots effort begun during World War I to support the war effort, Dario Robleto’s Defiant Gardens represents an expression of hope. Physically, the work echoes the shape of wreaths that were placed on soldiers’ graves by Civil War women’s auxiliaries. Through an innovative combination of form and materials, Robleto has forged a poignant narrative of the wartime experience, creating an artifact that speaks to the endurance and strength of the human spirit. The artist’s labor–intensive process begins with a symbiotic union of language and material. The deliberate listing of media that make up Defiant Gardens reads as much like lines of poetry as the contents of a caption and a key component of the work itself. Robleto composes the list of media prior to the creation of the work, letting the materials dictate its form and content. He began Defiant Gardens with the knowledge that he would use such visceral and loaded materials as the skeletons of carrier pigeons and paper made from the pulp of soldier’s letters home, objects already imbued with life and memory. This reversal of process makes the materials and objects used the end, rather than the means of the work of art.