Unsettled Bodies. Nature at War is an installation on the relationship between colonised landscapes and
their spatial translation in European cities. The landscape design for the
Peace Palace in The Hague symbolised international harmony but largely comprised
rhododendrons and azaleas appropriated from the colonies. In the 19th century,
the engineering of cinchona plants for the production of anti- malarial drugs
improved imperial survival in India. Java became the worldwide production
centre for antimalarial medicines. Alkaloids - either held in cinchona barks
produced in plantations, or injected in the blood of immunized soldiers -
proliferated in parallel to the propagation of colonial occupation. Combining
archival material and newly produced work, the installation examines these
multi-species, entangled acts of landscaping and colonization that enabled
azaleas to return to the Metropole as symbols of the Western ideal of Peace.