As the culminating installment of their three-part collaborative multi-year series of public symposia, Indigo Arts Alliance and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens are pleased to announce Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities. This edition will act as the capstone of the partnership, furthering the organizations' work to center Black, Brown, and Indigenous environmental perspectives in response to the escalating climate crisis.

Building on conversations that began in 2023 during Deconstructing the Boundaries: A Future of Land & Food Resilience and continued in 2024 with Deconstructing the Boundaries: The Land Fights Back, this symposium will use ecological justice and rematriation as the lens through which to focus on the historical severance of Black, Brown and Indigenous knowledge and power as a result of colonization.

The symposium will include a day of panel conversations, interactive art activations, and the unveiling of newly commissioned work by artist Daniel Minter and writer Arisa White. Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities will inspire sustainable futures and create a platform for innovative, community-driven environmental justice.

“For the past three years, we’ve committed ourselves to sharing the histories, ancestral knowledge, and lineage that have connected Black, Brown, and Indigenous people to the land,” said Jordia Benjamin, Executive Director at Indigo Arts Alliance. “Our shared hope is for our community to be empowered and transformed; to be healers, holders and stewards of the space in which they occupy long beyond these symposium convenings.”

In line with the focus of the symposium, Minter and White will unveil large-scale site-specific installations and sculpture in the Gardens that reflect the responsibility of life, love, and identity amongst communities. White, a New England-based author, poet, playwright, and 2022 Indigo Arts Alliance Artist-in-Residence Alum, will be creating a site-specific mirror poem that is inlaid into a wooded walking path of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. This mirror poem, also known as a palindrome and reversible poem, will speak to the themes of belonging, safety, rootedness, compassion, and love (philautia, agape, biophilia). The poem will directly reference the botanicals located in the woodland beds, in order to affirm one’s “hereness.” It serves, too, as a spell for opening, encouraging, and healing the heart. Arisa chose this specific poetic form as it embodies self-reflection, as well as seeing the same thing from a different perspective. “The mirror form is magical when you notice how the form works to create alternative meanings—the poem can sometimes answer itself or contradict itself or be a wish come true” White shares.

Minter, a painting/assemblage artist and the Co-Founder & Artist Director of Indigo Arts Alliance, will create a freestanding sculpture that builds upon the existing themes introduced in The Healing Language of Trees (a project installed at the Lynden Sculpture Garden), which continues the exploration of trees as symbols of resilience, healing, and interconnectedness. This second iteration will feature seven cedar trunks bound together as a single entity that, together, symbolize the African proverb, “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” Draped over the trunks will be strands of clay beads, hand-formed to echo seeds, stones, and relics, representing prayers for the next seven generations. The process will include multiple community activations that allow attendees to participate in the making of elements that will become part of the final sculpture.

“When [Indigo's cofounder] Marcia and I first discussed a partnership, we knew that bringing our two missions together had the potential to create something magical—but I don't think either of us realized how vital this partnership would become!” shared Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens President and CEO Gretchen Ostherr. “Over the past three years, we have shared resources and ideas, grown friendships and trust, and engaged and inspired countless guests along the way. Our journey to find ways to welcome more people to the Gardens—especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous people who have not always felt at home here—will continue far beyond this formal partnership. Now more than ever, we are grateful to Indigo Arts Alliance for their vision, leadership, and friendship.”

An all-day symposium featuring a panel and interactive art activations will be held at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens on Saturday, July 26. Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities will bring together members of the Maine cultural community to answer questions about environmental justice in urban and rural spaces.

While the event is free, space is limited, and the symposium will sell out. To register, please visit this link

Major Grant support for Deconstructing the Boundaries is generously donated by the Maine Humanities Council.

A schedule for the July 26 symposium is as follows:

Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities

9-10 a.m. Welcoming Remarks

10-11:30 Morning Panel-Themes: Exploring the frameworks necessary to activate community, share resources and organize for the betterment of all peoples through social shifts.

12-1 p.m. Lunch (meal included in registration)

1-2 p.m. Artist Talk-Commissioned artists, Danel Minter and Arisa White, present their work.

2:30-4 p.m. Art Activations - These art sessions will expand upon the symposium theme and give participants an opportunity to dive deeper. The breakout sessions will run at the same time, and attendees will choose which session they’d like to attend. Workshops themes will focus on Sound & Writing, Beading, Ceramics/Handbuilding, Plant & Herbal Medicine, and Policy/Advocacy.

4-5 p.m. Closing Remarks

About Indigo Arts Alliance: Learn more about their programming and residencies at www.indigoartsalliance.me.

About Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens: Learn more at www.mainegardens.org.