The Seed Smuggler's Luggage, Mark Dion

Mark Dion’s work The Seed Smuggler’s Luggage has prompted discussion about the historical smuggling of Brazilian rubber trees by the English who then set up their own rubber plantations in Malaysia. Dion’s use of a Boy Scout backpack and compartmentalized plastic containers suggests that the problem of seed smuggling is ongoing. Seeds play a powerful role in artworks dealing with bio-engineering, sustainability, and biodiversity, as in Eduardo Kac’s Edunia Seed Packs and Dornith Doherty’s Archiving Eden: the Vaults, both in this exhibition.