Victor Ballesteros’ Chilean Garden is a profound visual and textual exploration that unearths the hidden histories rooted in a botanical collection. Through a meticulous two-channel video work and a rich assemblage of archival documents—from plant accession tags to shipping labels and institutional correspondence—the project turns a Vancouver garden’s collection of Chilean flora into a site of critical inquiry. Ballesteros trains his lens on the intimate details of plants and the bureaucratic markers that identify them, revealing a complex web of colonial exchange, scientific classification, and the politics of displacement.

This publication documents Ballesteros’ influential work and expands upon its themes through an incisive essay by Laurie White. Framing the botanical garden as part of a modern “exhibitionary order,” the book traces the enduring connections between plant cultivation, art history, and imperial power. It reveals how the act of collecting, ordering, and displaying nature remains foundational to the narratives of identity and progress in a globalized world, making Chilean Garden an essential meditation on the entangled lives of plants and people across continents.