RIDGEFIELD, Connecticut — A Garden of Promise and Dissent at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum blooms with ironic vitality while the world outside is ensconced in snow. In it, 21 artists explore gardens through the lenses of material and politics, resulting in a mélange of paintings, sculptures, and installations examining the perpetual cycle of life and death. Made of everything from paint, porcelain, fabric, and living plants to metallurgy and video technology, these works frame gardens as a site of nurture and control, tradition and innovation. Some of the works on view mirror the asymmetry in our human-nature relationship, interrupting the unconscious and wayward dynamic between civilization and Mother Earth. Evoking the brutality of human intervention, for instance, Athena LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota and Ojibwe) overlays lead and steel sheet metal on an ink-washed conifer photograph in “Before the Sun Sets” (2024). Similarly, Jill Magid’s “A Model for Chrysanthemum Stem Elongation where y is 52” (2023) depicts a neon yellow blossom atop a long stem, pointing at how the flower industry harnesses evolution for profit.These artists alter an architecture of power that positions maleness above nature, instead elevating and equating femininity with the natural world. In opposition to controlling the earth, “Nuwa (Gold)” (2023) by Cathy Lu is an anthropomorphic gold-painted, holey ceramic tube embedded with raisined grape vines, evoking a supplicant prostrating with hands pointed heavenwards in a reference to goddess feminism. Meg Webster maintains this enlightened directionality in “Solar Grow Room with Facing Seats” (2024), encouraging coupling among plants while commenting on how technology enables human disconnection from life itself. Alina Bliumis’s Planned Parenthood (2023) series further explores natural reciprocity through a painted floral series set in matching velvet frames. Responding to Roe v. Wade’s reversal, she depicts nature’s abortion pills — from pomegranate and creeping cedars to acacia and savin flowers — as a pro-choice offering. Positioned physically outside the museum, “Perceived Happiness as the Ultimate Revenge” (2019) by Gracelee Lawrence is a fiberglass sculpture of a woman laid out on her stomach, personifying revenge body from the neck down while sporting an alien, kale leaf-like head with upward-reaching arms — suggesting she presents perfectly but feels vegetative.Installation view of A Garden of Promise and Dissent, featuring work by Cathy Lu and Teresa BakerIf Lawrence’s figure suggests the cultivated female form, Rachelle Dang’s “Seedling Carrier” (2019) reveals the actual machinery of horticulture, via a wire-covered house that is painted white and set atop a natural wood pallet with milky clay seed pits strewn in and around it. The hapless ejaculation of pip seeds and the cage-like shroud over the house frame do a lot of work to critique the careless and prison-like experience of domesticated women. Equally abstract, “Buffalo Bird Woman” (2024) is Teresa Baker’s (Mandan/Hidatsa) pat topographic honoring of horticulture: In the bright blue Astroturf work, she outlines the shape of her grandmother’s garden with yarn and willow. Even in their more playful approaches, these artists challenge our control of nature. Max Hooper Schneider’s electro-plated Dendrite Bonsai (2023) series transforms shrub assemblages — one like the hair of Rugrats‘s Cynthia, the other carrying six erect ears of corn — into artificial spectacles. Meanwhile, Brandon Ndife’s “Shade Tree” (2022/24) fossilizes leisure furniture — including a tree stump evoking the one in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (1964) — into a monument to environmental loss, with both artists revealing how we reshape nature for our entertainment and comfort. The exhibition succeeds in presenting gardens as deeply contested spaces where human ambition meets natural law. Through diverse media and perspectives, these artists reveal how our relationship with nature mirrors broader social dynamics, particularly gender politics and environmental exploitation. From LaTocha’s metallic impositions to Lu’s devotional forms, from Lawrence’s hybrid figure to Dang’s hothouse critique, A Garden of Promise and Dissent fosters a rich colloquy about power, care, and resistance. In doing so, the show fills a critical lacuna in our understanding of gardens, revealing them not simply as ornamental spaces but as living laboratories where we experiment with tradition and progress, control and surrender, destruction and renewal.Installation view of A Garden of Promise and DissentA Garden of Promise and Dissent continues at the Aldrich Museum (258 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut) through March 16. The exhibition was curated by Amy Smith-Stewart. Editor’s Note: The writer’s travel between New York City and the museum was paid for by the museum.