LaChaun Moore created an agriculturally-based installation titled Heirloom utilizing heirloom plants as a catalyst to talk about the historical context of the natural environment and how that differs from ancestral and familial ties. LaChaun Moore is an interdisciplinary artist who engages the public with her ethnographic fiber making and research practice. Her practice focuses on plant species that are linked specifically to Black and Indigenous farmers who have been systematically exploited for their agricultural ingenuity. She earned her BFA in Integrated Design at Parsons, The New School for Design with a focus on Alternative Fashion Strategies and Social Practice. There she began her grant-funded research “Perceptions of Cotton and Agriculture within the African American Community.” She has since built a small-scale farm growing naturally-colored green and brown cotton as well as ancestral indigo sourced from a Low Country plantation. As part of her research LaChaun co-hosts the WEAVE podcast. Her work envisions investigating, documenting, and implementing ancestral knowledge as the start to chipping away at the inequalities within the fiber system.

“Living in the forest for an extended period had a profound effect on my productivity as an artist. For the first time in my practice I was able to create freely in a space that felt like it was my own.” – LaChaun Moore

Photos by Christine “Cfreedom” Brown