The Garden as Scene of the Anthropocene: Heterotopia, Queer Ecologies, and Green Archives

The garden is inherently performative and a heterotopic place. As an ecosystem en miniature and a scene of the Anthropocene, the garden is simultaneously host to human and more-than-human communities and to (neo-colonial) narratives of violence. This simultaneity is exemplified in the Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1500) by Hieronymus Bosch, in Tejal Shah’s Between the Waves (2012), and in gardens that are showcased as part of the Venice Biennale Arte (2022 and 2024). In the context of queer ecologies, the plants and gardens within these works function as green archives and disturbances to dissolve hegemonic binaries and offer alternative world designs.