“Isolated from their habitat, extinct-in-the-wild plants have been stripped of their ecological circumstance allowing them to be a reproductive member of their population. Here, the plants are merely living their life in a physiological sense – they are the ‘living dead’.”

No longer existing in the wild, Wood’s Cycad (Encephalartos woodii) is one of the rarest plants on Earth. One male specimen was found in 1895 in the Ngoye Forest in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was removed from the wild, and its offsets have been propagated in botanical gardens worldwide. The species has been able to survive through human-made cloning of the male individual, but while numerous expeditions have sought to find another female specimen to bring the plant back from the brink of extinction, they all have been without success. However, the Ngoya Forest hasn’t been fully surveyed, and there is a possibility that a female may exist…

The Living Dead - On the Trail of a Female, partakes in the search for the elusive female specimen of the Wood’s Cycad, using manned aircraft surveys and drone technologies with expert guidance. Materialising into an audiovisual installation, the project draws attention to the relationship between vegetable survival and human intervention, while reflecting on how the inability for plants to survive in the wild is also intrinsically linked to their isolation from their ecosystems, and their preservation in human-made habitats.