Catalogue > At random

Set against the impending closure of Duke University’s century-old herbarium—home to over 825,000 dried plant specimens—The Ferns weaves together personal, political, and scientific narratives to explore the entangled histories of botany, identity, and resistance. At the film’s center are Kathleen Pryer, the herbarium’s director, and feminist theorist Banu Subramaniam. As one recounts naming a group of ferns after pop icon Lady Gaga—a decision rooted in queer identification—she opens deeper conversations about naming and categorization. The other traces how colonial sexual norms have long shaped botanical science, imposing binary gender onto plants and erasing more fluid, diverse reproductive systems. Woven between the two are drag performers who animate the herbarium’s archive, lip-syncing to Poker Face in glittering Gaga-inspired costumes among the rows of dried specimens. They become the Gaga ferns—blurring science and fantasy, taxonomy and play. Shot in North Carolina, where anti-LGBTQ+ legislation continues to threaten queer and trans lives, The Ferns situates the herbarium not just as a site of preservation, but as a stage for contesting dominant narratives. Special thanks to Dr. Banu Subramaniam and Dr. Kathleen Pryer for sharing their work, as well as performers Lotus Lolita, Portia Foxx, and Poison. Thank you to Assistant Director Vida Zamora and editor Rafe Scobey-tahl.

Erin Johnson is an artist and filmmaker based in New York, NY. Johnson received an MFA and a Certificate in New Media from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2019, and has participated in residencies at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, NY), Hidrante (San Juan, PR), Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY), among others. She was a 2024 Working Artist Fellow at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY). Her work has been exhibited or screened at venues including e-flux (New York, NY), BOAN1942 ARTSPACE (Seoul, KR), BOFFO (Fire Island, NY), Rencontres Internationales (Paris, FR / Berlin, DE), BIENALSUR (Buenos Aires, AR), MOCA (Toronto, CA), Munchmuseet (Oslo, NO), Sanatorium (Istanbul, TR), Times Square Arts (New York, NY), etc. galerie (Prague, CZ), Cinalfama (Lisbon, PT), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA), Billytown (The Hague, NL), Galleria Eugenia Delfini (Rome, IT), and REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA). Johnson is the Undergraduate Director and faculty member of the Studio Art Program at New York University.