Mutations in Yellow

Abstract

Mutations in yellow, a serial arrangement of yellow pigments on rice paper are reflections on botany, viruses and empire.The studies investigate the materiality of yellow, using turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, chili powder to make imprecise diagrams; reminiscent of, but neither calligraphy nor painting; gestures that trouble and muddy the taxonomies of yellowness and the historical entanglements between 18th century colonial studies of plant disease, imperial routes and racial capitalism.The invention of “yellow” as a racial description associated with “dirty, lurid, treacherous, suspect, diseased, weak, lazy, melancholy, unproductive” appeared in natural science publications, frequently representing maladies and infectious afflictions to biological and human (European Man) health and reproduction. The images evade scientific conventions of pictorial accuracy that typify botanical illustrations and instead present the colour yellow as medium in non linear, non-teleological “mutations”—present and willfully unproductive, like withdrawal from the descriptive apparatus mapping “yellow” to infection, foreignness and invasion.