"recompose" 2021-ongoing
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Caitlin Franzmann
Born 1979, Gubbi Gubbi Country/Gympie, QLD. Lives and works in Yuggera and Turrbal Country/Brisbane, QLD. Pronouns: she/her.
"recompose" 2021-ongoing
divination cards, performance and interactive website
Courtesy of the artist.
recompose is a tarot reading led by artist Caitlin Franzmann, which audiences can experience during These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature. The work was originally devised in response to the Mossy Log Garden at the Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden on Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi and Jinibara Country.
By engaging with a deck of hand-drawn divination cards, audiences are invited to attune to the understory of a forest, its leaf litter, humus, microbes, and symbiotic entanglements as analogies for personal and collective guidance. Learning from decay and regeneration, Franzmann draws our attention to nature’s great ‘decomposers’—the fungi, bacteria, earthworms, and insects that play a critical role in the metabolism of ecosystem health and nature’s carbon cycles.
Made in consultation with entomologists, biologists, and mycologists, Franzmann foregrounds the non-human to reconceptualise the traditional tarot deck with its Major and Minor Arcana, four suits, and symbolically charged human archetypes. By contrast, recompose follows one critter or multi-species organism on each card, prompting us to channel our focus towards the mutual benefit of the collective in transformative ways.
Hold the cards, shuffle them, and ask a question. The question can be personal or planetary…
recompose can be experienced as a live participatory encounter with the artist at selected times during the exhibition.
For more information and to book a free live tarot reading here on campus at UQ, click on the link below:
Live tarot reading at UQ Art Museum
Alternatively, recompose can be experienced in an online digital version by clicking on the link below.