Cabbage Patch, Chicago, 2019 is a site-specific, temporary work, a piece of land art located in a major city – in Garfield Park Conservatory, a botanical garden in West Chicago.
Cabbage Patch consists of two components: a cabbage field with 10,000 heads of cabbage and an outdoor kitchen. The vision behind the work is to point out beauty, what is overlooked, and what we have in common. The artwork places in the foreground fundamental conditions for life and cultivation inside and outside the city.
In the spring of 2019, a field the size of a football field was marked out in the Garfield Park Conservatory. 10,000 cabbages were planted and grown for the opening of the biennial at which people could come and harvest a head of cabbage that they could either prepare together in the outdoor kitchen or take home. In addition to the immediate, up-close experience of cabbages and field, the work acted as an invitation for interaction, engagement, and reflection. The activities were supposed to instigate discussions and learning with the cabbage field as the focal point.