How to Grow the Cowpea: Artistic and Ecological Pedagogies in Practice
Jars of cottonseed meal, oatmeal hay, sweet clover, Sporobolus indicus, and vetch meal, collected by George Washington Carver, undated. Courtesy of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site.
Opening Reception:
Fri., Sep. 4, 5–8 p.m.
How to Grow the Cowpea: Artistic and Ecological Pedagogies in Practice is a group exhibition that considers environmental stewardship amid the climate crisis. The exhibition is a collaboration between the VAC and Planet Texas 2050 (PT2050), an initiative that supports interdisciplinary climate research at the University of Texas at Austin. PT2050 advances climate research and designs strategies to adapt to and mitigate the cascading and compounding threats of climate change that affect people across Texas and beyond, including extreme heat, inland and coastal flooding, wildfire, and drought. Grounded in this research, How to Grow the Cowpea features fifteen artists working across painting, photography, sculpture, film, performance, installation, and gardening to create a material transformation in the natural environment. The exhibition includes five new commissions that place artists in close collaboration with researchers from the PT2050 network, enabling them to study and share the tools gleaned from scientific and artistic practices that examine the slow processes of learning from and caring for the places where we live.
How to Grow the Cowpea borrows its title from a bulletin by artist and scientist George Washington Carver. While working at Tuskegee University in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Carver wrote and distributed nearly 50 educational bulletins about the ecology of Macon County, Alabama, including “How to Grow the Cow Pea (And Forty Ways of Preparing It as a Table Delicacy).” The pamphlet presents Carver’s research in a holistic manner: it details the legume’s history, planting instructions, cooking recipes, information on how the bean improves soil health, and strategies for selling the crop to ensure financial stability. Carver often brought these bulletins to rural Black communities in Alabama, hosting in-person demonstrations and distributing starter plants. The exhibition builds on Carver’s pedagogical legacy and artistic practices by shifting focus from familiar representations of the climate crisis toward material transformation, experiential learning, and collective imagination.
How to Grow the Cowpea is just one moment in a much longer tradition of pedagogical practices; artworks in and around the gallery will grow, shift, or be removed for use, anchoring the project in a history of ecological interventions that began before and will continue long after the exhibition closes.
How to Grow the Cowpea: Artistic and Ecological Pedagogies in Practice includes artworks by Saif Azzuz, Imani Jacqueline Brown, George Washington Carver, Mel Chin, Sahara Dust Season Collective (Anthony Almendarez, Mashal Awai, Sol Diaz-Peña, larí garcía, Jeremy Johnson, Jack Morillo, Corey De’Jaun Sherrad Jr., Paty Lorena Solórzano), Heather Bird Harris, Angel Lartigue, Marie Lorenz, Anna Mayer, Mark Menjívar, Kate Newby, Pallavi Sen, jackie sumell, Cecilia Vicuña, and Obie Weathers.
The exhibition features new commissions from Mark Menjívar, Kate Newby, Sahara Dust Collective, Pallavi Sen, jackie sumell, and Obie Weathers.
How to Grow the Cowpea is curated by Melissa Fandos, VAC Assistant Curator, and Erika Mei Chua Holum, Curator at The Dock Art Centre in Co. Leitrim, Ireland.
Generous support for How to Grow the Cowpea: Artistic and Ecological Pedagogies in Practice is provided by Planet Texas 2050, the Every Page Foundation, and the Green Fund.
