The new British natives: Rhododendron ponticum and the questions of migration in Yan Wang Preston and Monty Adkins’s With Love. From an Invader. (2020–21)

This article delves into the moving-image work With Love. From an Invader . (2020–21) by Chinese British artist Yan Wang Preston and British composer Monty Adkins, exploring how the artists employ an ecocritical lens to deconstruct western-British sociopolitical prejudices towards cultural diversity. Comprising four panels, the installation centres on the Rhododendron ponticum woody plant in Burnley, Lancashire. Originally brought to the United Kingdom from China, Spain and other locations during the colonial period, the plant is now the subject of the official campaign for eradication on the grounds that it is capable of ‘out-compet[ing] native flora’ (National Trust for Scotland). Drawn to the parallel between the official policy on Rhododendron ponticum and the Brexit campaign’s anti-migrant stance, further deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang Preston and Adkins embarked on visually and sonically recording the local heart-shaped rhododendron for twelve months from March 2020 to March 2021. Drawing from the interviews with the artists as well as bioinformatician Alan Elliott and photography curator Zelda Cheatle, the article argues how the work critically questions the ambiguity about what makes the new native plant an ‘unwelcome alien’ (Forestry and Land Scotland). As the article further argues, this questioning stands as a metaphor for exploring the cultural alienation of human migrants in the United Kingdom. The article’s concluding remarks include a reflection on how With Love. From an Invader . was received by wider audiences when it was exhibited at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 2022, and the cultural implications of this within the context of the post-Brexit and post-COVID-19 British society.