King of Weeds, Richard Selesnick; Nicholas Kahn

King of Weeds forms part of the narrative of Kahn & Selesnick’s recent performance and installation series: Truppe Fledermaus & The Carnival at the End of the World. The King of Weeds is one of several iterations of the Green Man theme in this series. The Green Man is a leaf-covered figure with a long history in folkloric traditions that can be traced from late antiquity to the artistic traditions of Austria, the Balkans, Britain, and Germany, as depicted in the adjacent engraving by Sebald Beham. The artists commented that King of Weeds “can be viewed as a symbol of invasive species spread by climate change and human migration.” The work also asks us to contemplate what a weed is, and to whom, echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous inquiry, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

King of Weeds forms part of the narrative of Kahn & Selesnick’s recent performance and installation series: Truppe Fledermaus & The Carnival at the End of the World. The King of Weeds is one of several iterations of the Green Man theme in this series. The Green Man is a leaf-covered figure with a long history in folkloric traditions that can be traced from late antiquity to the artistic traditions of Austria, the Balkans, Britain, and Germany, as depicted in the adjacent engraving by Sebald Beham. The artists commented that King of Weeds “can be viewed as a symbol of invasive species spread by climate change and human migration.” The work also asks us to contemplate what a weed is, and to whom, echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous inquiry, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”