Culture: the cultivation of land, the action or practice of cultivating the soil. (OED)

It is often said that the limit of a discipline insofar defines its essence. This project sets out by asking: where is the limit of nature, and where is the limit of culture? Though distinctively different to each other, nature and culture are ultimately conditioned by the same force: humanity.

Situated at the intersection of nature and culture, gardening becomes a revealing medium. It embodies contradictory states: control and care, ownership and servitude, regulation and freedom. Garden tending exposes not only our desire to nurture, but also our fear of what cannot be fully governed.

Titled nature, tended, this project places a cultivated garden inside an untended forest. Through this juxtaposition, the work blurs the boundary of nature and culture and asks: “When we tend the garden, how does it tend us back?”