Kin-making with an invader
Suzi Grossman had a toxic relationship with Black Swallow-wort. Then they brought the weed into their studio.
In the middle of MassArt x SoWa’s main gallery, a green vine rises, ascending into ghostly blue and taking off like butterflies up to the ceiling: Earth and growth, life and release. I knew nothing about the meaning behind Suzi Grossman’s Black Swallow-wort Entangled when I saw it. All I knew was it was enchanting.
Suzi’s work, on view through June 7 in the MassArt Spring 2026 MFA Thesis show, wrestles with a lot more than life cycles. The vine the artist uses, Black Swallow-wort, is an invasive species, coming to the U.S. in the mid 1800s via greenhouses in Ipswich and at the Harvard Botanical Garden. It quickly escaped the hothouse, and now runs rampant in New England, climbing up houses and strangling trees. It has spread westward, outcompeting native plants, and it’s toxic to baby Monarch caterpillars, who usually feed on more nourishing milkweed variants.
In short, it’s a plant that’s easy to hate. Enter Suzi, who hated it, too. Until they began to invite it into their art practice, which is based in making cyanotypes, a medium long associated with botanical study.
How easily we fall into using simplistic categories of bad and good. Our media and political landscape exaggerates those inclinations. As Suzi positions Black Swallow-wort Entangled, it’s impossible not to see the parallel between invasive species and immigrants. Anything – anyone – from outside is bad, threatening our purity. Yet many people who support immigrants battle invasive species.
Suzi’s ethos complicates the black-and-white of it all. They prefer to welcome ambiguity, to feel and contemplate its friction. I, too, have righteously torn down Black Swallow-wort, but when I walked into MassArt x SoWa, the beauty, the tangles, the life of Suzi’s installation hit me long before I realized that the vine was an old enemy of mine. When I finally recognized it, my antipathy didn’t seem to matter at all.
What if we all could turn our hatred into art?
Suzi writes:
At the beginning of this project I found myself in a toxic relationship with an invasive weed. I was mired in unproductive negativity toward Black Swallow-wort, a plant that grows everywhere you look in the Boston area. I walked down my street, eyes peeled for the invader, and dropped the pamphlets on the porches of the houses whose yards had the vines. I was becoming obsessed. I felt as if I couldn’t appreciate the Spring flowers because of the interloper hiding amongst them. I scowled at the vines.
I came to the realization of my hate for this plant with a start. I am not someone who hates easily and I didn’t like seeing that in myself. I realized that I needed to engage in a process of kin-making in order to restore balance to the relationship.
What does it look like to engage in kin-making with an invasive plant?
