Maybe Kudzu Covering My Body: Camouflage in the South at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, SC

“Maybe Kudzu Covering My Body: Camouflage in the South” by Borealis, Jacob Riddle, Katie Hargrave & Meredith Laura Lynn, Max Trumpower, Mo Costello, Nathaniel Hendrickson, Raymond Thompson, and Utē Petit, curated by Megan Bickel, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, SC, 09/05/2025 – 14/06/2025.

Exhibition text:
In the West, camouflage was first driven by the increasing range and accuracy of infantry firearms in the 19th century–which came with an olive green uniform worn by the British during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Camouflage, as we recognize it now, was theorized and introduced into the military lexicon upon the research of artists such as Abbott Thayer, Norman Wilkinson, and Hugh Cott at the beginning of World War I. Their designs referred to countershading, reference to animal coloration, background matching, and disruption. Though the claim for the invention of camouflage is taken by the British, Native peoples from the Americas were documented by Thayer using comparative and background matching camouflage for hunting and battle dress long before the 20th century evolution in the UK and United States. Indigenous hunters not only built camouflage to conceal themselves from their prey, but built it on the environment. The distinctions between the practice of concealing oneself as that of and in the environment, and the contrasting practice of observing the environment and mimicking are distinguishing characteristics that one cannot help but contemplate when considering this type of creative armament. In Maybe Kudzu Covering My Body, the artists borealis, Jacob Riddle, Katie Hargrave & Meredith Laura Lynn, Max Trumpower, Mo Costello, Nathaniel Hendrickson, Raymond Thompson, and Utē Petit explore camouflage as subject, action, visual reference, or by actively camouflaging. We find investigations of counter-surveillance, and in other examples, we find the opportunity that Abbot Thayer found himself preoccupied with–the evidence of camouflaging within nature as a stimulus; evidenced in community led infrastructure that provides safety and support amongst and within marginalization, or through a fusing and musing between that which is the body and the stuff that isn’t.