Introducing Joiri Minaya: Venus Flytrap Edition
A Collaboration with Joiri Minaya × BlackStar
BlackStar presented Venus Flytrap, a site-specific performance series and installation at Bartram’s Garden, from artist Joiri Minaya, curated by Dessane Lopez Cassell. Set at North America’s oldest surviving botanical garden—the series reflected on the intertwined legacies of freedom, extraction, and ecology.
To mark the occasion, we collaborated with BlackStar and Minaya on a special release that merges rest, art, and resistance. Featuring Minaya’s bold visual language—sensuality, vibrant florals, and layered pattern—the set includes a blanket and silk bandana inspired by the installation itself, inviting you to engage with the work not just visually, but through touch, ritual, and everyday use.
ITA Field Trip to Venus Flytrap
On Saturday, May 31st, we headed out of the city for a day at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia —
an open-air afternoon shaped by art, food, and gathering. We moved through Joiri Minaya’sVenus Flytrap installation and performance, enjoyed a custom picnic box by Sunday’s Only, with biscuits and Caribbean-inspired flavor pairings, walked the land, and had the chance to take something home.
About
BlackStar presentsVenus Flytrap, a site-specific performance series and installation by artist Joiri Minaya at Bartram’s Garden, curated by Dessane Lopez Cassell. Through lush visuals and custom textiles, Minaya reflects on the intertwined legacies of freedom, extraction, and colonialism in North America's oldest botanical garden. The work explores hidden histories of Indigenous plant life, labor, and anti-colonial resistance rooted in the grounds of Bartram's Garden.
Joiri Minayais a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works in photography, digital media, film, performance, sculpture, textiles and painting. Born in New York and raised in the Dominican Republic, Minaya describes her multiculturally-informed work as ‘a reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing, and exorcizing imposed histories.’
BlackStar is a Philadelphia-based organization dedicated to celebrating and uplifting the work of Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists across film, visual culture, and storytelling.