All Things Being Equal; or, Eve Can’t Stop Dreaming About That Goddamn Snake | Ashley Pridmore

Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present All Things Being Equal; or, Eve Can’t Stop Dreaming About That Goddamn Snake, an installation in the ALH Sculpture Garden by artist Ashley Pridmore, who is based in New Orleans, Louisiana. All Things Being Equal; or, Eve Can’t Stop Dreaming About That Goddamn Snake is a site-responsive installation focusing on creative and destructive forces in the natural world, and loss of home and habitat resulting from events such as floods.
Pridmore describes the concept of the installation as “All Things Being Equal; or, Eve Can’t Stop Dreaming About That Goddamn Snake and a flood has torn through the garden, leaving debris from everywhere smashed against her beloved tree. This flood is the end and the beginning, this flood is just the middle of the story in a world that floods. As the waters move on, they’ve left behind texture and piles of overlapping feelings. Eve’s snakes coil and writhe through the scape, binding everything together, weaving and caressing and entwining. What is knowledge, anyway?”
The artist employs Biblical references to the story of Eve, the snake, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the story of Noah and the great flood, which references her evangelical childhood as well as literary sources such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. While both of these Bible stories discuss actions and their respective consequences, Pridmore’s installation acknowledges such consequences and chooses to reframe the garden in a new state.
The installation embeds itself into the ALH Sculpture Garden via the site’s pre-existing features, establishing itself as the new native species of the garden. Utilizing both manmade and natural materials in surrealistic ways, Pridmore calls attention to the conflict of human impact on the natural world and nature’s forceful response to that impact. Despite the mark humans have left on the world, nature finds a way to respond and return, with unforeseen adaptations.