EXHIBITION & PUBLIC PROGRAM















BEYOND THE PLOT:
RESISTANCE AGAINST 
THE DELINEATION
OF LAND AND PRACTICE 
IN AGRICULTURE 

APRIL 13-18, 2026

EXPERIMENTAL GALLERY
OLIVE TJADEN HALL
CORNELL UNIVERSITY



April 13-17
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Exhibition
Beyond the Plot

April 13, 
5:00-7:00 PM

Panel Discussion
Undercurrents: Navigating the Colonial Legacies in Agriculture

April 15,
5:00-7:00 PM

Reception & Readings
Thinking with Land as a Collective Space

 April 18
2:00-3:00 PM

Farm & Mural Visit
West Haven Farm

 
EXHIBITION
APRIL 13-18, 2026

The exhibition Beyond the Plot is part of a long-term, multifaceted research project of the same name that explores concepts of control and resistance in agriculture. The title plays on the word “plot” simultaneously as an enclosed area of land and the structure of a narrative. At once, the work examines both the current delimitations of land and thought imposed by extractivist USDA policy, and the everyday forms of resistance enacted by small-scale farmers and land-cultivation groups against  imperial agricultural systems in Upstate New York.    

Event location:
Experimental Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University
Open on weekdays from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM






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PANEL DISCUSSION
APRIL 13, 5:00 - 7:00 PM

Undercurrents: Navigating the Colonial Legacies in Agriculture

Join us on Monday, April 13 at 5:00 pm, for a panel featuring Silvia Bottinelli, Full Teaching Professor in the Visual and Material Studies Department at Tufts University, and Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, provost Associate Professor, SIS | Environment, Development & Health at American University. Bottinelli will present her recent book Artists and the Practice of Agriculture, which highlights how  artists engage with agricultural systems and address its enduring colonial legacies. Graddy-Lovelace will speak about the importance of engaging with the coloniality of USDA policy and will discuss her work toward a more equitable, socially and racially just Farm Bill. Together, their presentations explore the intersections of artistic practice, historical memory and ongoing strategies for confronting colonial legacies in agriculture. 

The presentations will be followed by a conversation opened to the public and moderated by MFA in Creative Visual Arts Carla Rangel Garcia. 

Event location:
Experimental Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University

Zoom:
https://cornell.zoom.us/j/94313632818?pwd=GXFCmdoHgAGgZF2DFn0rS2GfIZS6qX.1



Panelists: 

Courtesy of Silvia Bottinelli
Courtesy of Garrett Graddy-Lovelace

Silvia Bottinelli (PhD University of Pisa) is Full Teaching Professor in the Visual and Material Studies Department, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Prof. Bottinelli's expertise focuses on food and ecocriticism in contemporary art, as well as 20th and 21st century Italian Art. She recently published the single-authored books Artists and the Practice of Agriculture. Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960 (Routledge 2024) and Double-Edged Comforts: Domestic Life in Modern Italian Art and Visual Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021). Garrett Graddy-Lovelace researches and teaches agricultural policy and agrarian geography. Her work focuses on domestic and international contexts and impacts of US food and farm policy--from critical analysis of commodity and conservation programs to the geopolitical ecologies of food aid and hunger, from farmlabor to intellectual property regimes. Drawing on histories of anti/colonialism and geographies of de/coloniality, she studies crop diversity conservation, food/data/land sovereignty, and the return of traditional ecological knowledge. This includes community-based research-action with grassroots groups on the Farm Bill (see disparitytoparity.org project and Pointing the Farm Bill toward Racial Justice project). 

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RECEPTION & READING SESSION
APRIL 15, 5:00-7:00 PM

Thinking with Land as a Collective Space
Join Katie Rueff, María Bulla and Carla Rangel García in a collective reading session, sharing excerpts from books and songs that talk about resistance movements in agriculture, indigenous and campesino-led land management, and alternative food cultivation practices. This session is the result of conversations held in their reading group Thinking with Land as a Collective Space (sponsored by the Institute for Comparative Modernities). 


Event location: 
Experimental Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University


Co-organizers

Courtesy of Maria Bulla
Courtesy of Katie Rueff


María Bulla is a music maker. She creates small handmade objects and oversized scores, she writes songs, makes sounds with a synthesizer and combines them with texts and field recordings; all this with the hope of creating situations that become part of everyday life. She has a project called hacemos bulla, a gift-making project with the purpose of reminding us that we are noise makers, we make noise.If, as María says, we are noise makers, then Katie is compelled by our (sound)waves. Katie is thinking about the architecture of our living, and the forces of our movements. Right now, she is working on a thesis asking how antiblackness is re/produced through "modern technology."

(And the snake’s name is Waffles, if you were curious :))


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FARM & MURAL VISIT
EVENT POSTPONED
New date out soon!


West Haven Farm 
On Saturday, April 18, Lorena Mendoza and Carlos Aguilera will lead a tour of West Haven Farm and share the meaning behind the mural covering their farmhouse. 

www.westhavenfarm.net


Location:
West Haven Farm
27 Rachel Carson Way, Ithaca, NY

Transportation:
If you are interested in joining but neeed transportation, write to cr647@cornell.edu

A car share will be leaving from Olive Tjaden Hall at 1:40. 
Courtesy of West Haven Farm











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BEYOND THE PLOT





This project was genereously supported by the Cornell College of Architecture, Art, and Planning’s Engagement Impact Grant, Cornell Council for the Arts, The Institute for Comparative Modernities and the Rural Humanities Micro-Grant. 




For more information:

Carla Rangel Garcia
www.carlarangelgarcia.com
cr647@cornell.edu





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