Zomia Garden

“This is a space where lives—human and non-human—dwell in the periphery of imperial imaginaries”.

In Zomia Garden, our latest volume in the CCA Singles series, artist and curator Yutong Lin traces the legacies of botanical exploration in the Himalayan-Hengduan Mountain chain region often referred to as Zomia—the world’s largest area historically inhabited by peoples not governed by a nation-state. 

Conceived within the framework of the 2023–2024 CCA Emerging Curator Residency, the book takes Lin to her hometown in this mountainous region to retrace the paths of early twentieth-century plant hunters, particularly Joseph F. Rock, who spent nearly three decades in Yunnan and Tibet. They meticulously documented flora, landscapes, and rituals in collaboration with Indigenous Nakhi guides, and inspired generations of mythmaking about the Himalayas as sites of abundance and mystery. Lin juxtaposes Rock’s photographic itineraries with her own, creating a layered narrative that exposes the entanglements of colonial history, botanical science, and cultural resilience. 

By mapping her own journey alongside Rock’s, Lin illuminates how Zomia’s knowledge systems and cosmologies continuously reshaped Western botanical expeditions. What emerges is not only a reconsideration of botanical history but also a meditation on translation, survival, and the politics of land and language. Zomia Garden insists on a Zomian perspective—foregrounding oral traditions, ritual practices, and Indigenous worldviews that resisted imperial assimilation and continue to animate the landscape today. 

The book is illustrated with Lin’s photographs alongside archival reproductions, offering us an intimate view of journeys across Himalayan topographies where rhododendron forests, Dongba rituals, and memories of resistance shape both land and the narratives we tell about it. 

Book launches in Montreal, The Hague, and Berlin
On October 18, 2–4pm, join us at the CCA bookstore for a conversation between Yutong Lin and Yan Zhou on botanical and colonial histories in the Zomia region, as well as Lin’s intersecting archival, artistic, and editorial approach. The discussion will be moderated by Victoria Addona, Editor, CCA Publications. You can also join Yutong Lin for conversations around Zomia Garden in The Hague at Nowhere Bookstore on October 26 at 2:30pm, or in Berlin at Common Imprint on November 1 at 4pm.

Perspectives beyond the book
As part of the project, a series of related online articles by invited artists and scholars further uncovers the archival, scientific, and aesthetic histories of selected botanical species to reflect on the landscape and culture of the region: Zomia Garden: Yutong Lin on botanical imaginaries of the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountain region; The Scale of Moss by Hongyu Chen and a related soundscape Sounding Moss by Cui Jian; Siej, Jri Bramon, and other plants: Pujita Guha on how Khasis build worlds in the forest; The Myth of Davidia: Ben Weilun Zhang on E.H. Wilson and the botanical elsewhere; and Rhododendron Field Notes: Ann Chen on guerrilla gardening and plant diasporas.

About the series
CCA Singles are short printed one-offs that present one voice, one object, or one event. Ranging from raw source material to edited topical reflections, they propose an intimate contact with ideas generated or collected at the CCA. Other titles in the series include Stefano Graziani, Documents from Gordon Matta-Clark’s personal library; Robert J. Kett, Prospects Beyond Futures: Counterculture White Meets Red Power; Esra Akcan, Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture; Aglaia Konrad, Alina, Barbara, Halina, Helena, Zofia; Sofia Nannini, Is there a known optimum gate size for the dual control of cattle and sheep?, and the volumes featuring the Meanwhile in Japan conversations with Itsuko Hasegawa, Hiroshi Hara, and Toyo Ito organized as part of the CCA c/o Tokyo program. 

CCA Singles are distributed by the CCA Bookstore and an international network of collaborating bookstores. The launch of the series was supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. 

For more about our publications, and to find out when the call for the next Emerging Curator Residency Program opens, subscribe here.