In art history, flowers and plants have long been associated with beauty, fragility, and romance. Dark Botanica explores how contemporary artists reinvent and transmute floral symbolism, revealing associations with desire, life cycles, and crisis across a wide range of media and styles. In these works, botanical forms mutate, grow from the darkness, or emerge as surreal hybrids, showing that flowers are not only passive objects of love or admiration but also indicators of internal struggle, environmental critique, and feminist reimagination. The featured artists dig into the strange, otherworldly side of flowers, planting seeds of deeper understanding for our natural world. 

Artists: Alina Bliumis, Cameron Davis, Dylan Griffin, Marcie Scudder, Megan Bogonovich, Sian Fan, and Sage Tucker-Ketcham

Image: Sian Fan,”Stinger”, 2022

Image: Cami Davis, "Encounter", 2023

BCA’s fall exhibitions are supported in part by the Maslow Family Foundation. Dark Botanica has support from Higher Ground Presents, Red Wagon Plants, American Meadows. Hospitality sponsors: Lake Champlain Chocolates, City Market Onion River Co-Op, and Sugarsnap Catering. Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts.