Lindsey Carter
About the Artist
Originally from the US Eastern Seaboard, Lindsey Carter is a designer, writer, and maker based out of Ontario. Carter received a Bachelor's in Linguistics and Biology from Duke University in 2012 and completed her second degree in Design Art and Print Media from Concordia University in 2019. Her work, often research-based, is inspired by the limitless ways we tell stories to others and ourselves. She is interested in how print-based media, the web, and other technologies are pushing one another to evolve and the ways we tell these stories. She primarily works with silkscreen and digital print, but also experiments with textiles, 3D modeling, web development, and installation.
Pario, 2021, 3D model
About the Work
Pario examines the enslaved body as a battleground and the everyday exercises in agency and resistance taken by Black American women.
During the Connecting... Residency, I started a research project on antebellum agriculture and began to focus on food as medicine and herbalism. In my readings, I learned that cotton was more than just a cash crop.
“…all the Negro women, they had become wise to this here cotton root. They would chew that and they would not give birth to a baby. All of their masters sho' did have to watch them, but sometimes they would slip out at night and get them a lot of cotton roots and bury them under their quarters.”
— Culpepper, “Gossypium spp. (Cotton Root Bark): A Symbol of Herbal Resistance”
Learning about this particular act of resistance struck me because cotton, King Cotton – this cash crop for which so many justified enslavement and brutality – had this new meaning.
But of course it didn't end there. Cotton root was just one element in an ongoing struggle for agency and control over the bodies of black women particularly.
Pario is a 3D bouquet. I chose the method of 3D modeling because I wanted to lean into its unreality. Moreover, I wanted the option to enable the viewer to interact with the bouquet. The Residency is, after all, about connecting, particularly in this time where we're hopefully keeping our distance.
Special thank you to Deanna Bowen for her mentorship and support during the residency.
