Webster Library Exhibitions

Exuberant Botanica

August 18 – December 12, 2025

Webster Library LB-2 vitrines and Discovery Counter

In conjunction with the FOFA Gallery exhibition: Hot House/Maison chaude

Exuberant Botanica is part of a long-term interdisciplinary project, Hot House/Maison chaude, initiated in 2020 by Aaron McIntosh, Associate Professor in Studio Arts. Rooted in queer ecology, science fiction, ethnobotany, eco-feminism, and social practice, this evolving body of work bridges art, botany, and activism, drawing on scientific, historical, and cultural elements to focus on the needs and identities of queer communities. The project's name is inspired by 19th-century “hot houses” that nurtured rare plant species, paralleling how McIntosh seeks to cultivate spaces for marginalized sexualities and gender identities. The Webster Library vitrines serve as a supplement to the Hot House/Maison chaude exhibition at the FOFA Gallery (Sept. 2 – Dec. 15, 2025, EV Building Room 1.715), showcasing a vast range of botanical texts, including herbal manuscripts and botanical illustrations that have influenced the project.

The second act, Exuberant Botanica, centers on exploring plants that have co-evolved with human sexualities and gender-based medicine. The project takes its name partly from the work of biologist Bruce Bagemihl, whose ground-breaking text, Biological Exuberance¹, catalogued hundreds of animal kingdom instances of same-sex relations, from sexual pleasure to pair-bonding and parenting. While Western biology and medicine have often pathologized queer bodies, this project flips the narrative by suggesting queerness is rooted in nature, alongside the diverse gender and sexual patterns already seen in plant life. The project looks to ethnobotany—the study of plants and their uses by people—for plant species that may have evolved alongside humans, serving the mutual benefits of expanding gender and sexual identities.

Botanical illustration was a lodestar in the project's trajectory. This art form, which changes widely across cultural geographies and aesthetic periods, became a scientific teaching tool in the West, dissecting plants into parts, offering a visually abstract representation of nature. Shifting with technological advances in printmaking, science and travel, botanical illustration evolved alongside European empire-expansion and colonizing expeditions, leaving indelible marks on the tradition. Sifting through these texts, McIntosh stumbled on the complex histories of herbal manuscripts, which are the forebearers of both botanic illustration and the precursors to modern pharmacopoeias, many of which were developed by “wise women” and possibly queer individuals. These early works, such as Dioscurides' Codex Vindobonensis, or The Herbal of al-Ghāfiqī, originated from diverse global cultures, providing detailed knowledge about plants and their medicinal uses, especially regarding reproductive and gender health.

The project envisions a “queer herbal” that intertwines the healing properties of plants with the needs of queer and trans communities. McIntosh scoured ancient texts, including Medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian herbals, as well as Appalachian folk remedies, for plants that might have been used covertly by queer people for health, healing, or pleasure. For instance, Morning Glory (Ipomoea) is wide-ranging plant family with historic queer witchcraft connections, as it was administered as a hallucinogen in Medieval Europe, and as a mood-altering substance connected to Xochipilli, the Aztec god of flowers and patron of homosexuals and male prostitutes. In the Victorian-era 'language of flowers', Morning Glory flowers were symbolic of unrequited love, and thus became synonymous with the furtive nature of queer desires.

For pre-modern knowledge-keepers, the herbal was viewed by its owner as a 'living text,' a work-in-progress. The “unfixed” nature of these herbal guides finds resonance in our very contemporary moments of self-determination, reconciliation, and realignment of societal norms. Inspired to build a collaborative herbal for healing contemporary queer and trans community health and well-being issues, I published Exuberant Botanica in 2022. The participatory zine was mailed to 2SLGBTQ+ folk across Turtle Island, and contributors were asked to consider what ails them and to imagine a fictional herbal remedy for this ailment. These participant ideations have since been added to a bound herbal manuscript, and also translated into a series of botanic drawings, appliqué botanic quilts, and sculptural teaching models of speculative plant herbals.

At its core, Exuberant Botanica aims to rekindle humanity's connection with plants and healing, offering a speculative look at the future of queer people and the tools they might need to combat societal issues such as queer violence and discrimination. Through the lens of queer ecology and speculative botany, McIntosh imagines a future where plants can offer not only physical healing but also a form of resistance and resilience in the face of ongoing challenges.

1) Bagemihl, Bruce. 2000. Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Stonewall Inn Editions.

The artist thanks Concordia University Library and McGill University Library for the loan of botanical books for this exhibition.