Verbal Description: Alan Michelson, Sapponckanikan (Tobacco Field), 2019

Narrator: This work, titled Sapponckanikan (Tobacco Field), is a site-specific augmented reality, or AR, installation that creates an experience of being surrounded by a circle of tobacco plants against the Museum’s lobby. The artist, Alan Michelson, is a New York-based artist and Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and his work often addresses relationships to Native histories. For Sapponckanikan, he collaborated on the AR component with the artist Steven Fragale.

The plants are tall, reaching about three to four feet. They extend upwards with thick central stems, appearing as though they have taken root directly in the space. Large leaves are layered in multiple tiers, creating a dense, layered appearance, while the edges of the leaves are smooth, with slight curved variations that give them a natural, organic feel. They vary in size, with larger leaves near the base and smaller ones higher up the stem, contributing to a sense of natural growth and progression.

Near the top of each plant, the stems produce clusters of tightly packed vibrant green buds, about the size of a marble. Some of them seem to have started blooming, indicating a fresh, young stage of growth.

The overall shape of the plants is slightly conical, widening toward the middle before tapering off near the top where clusters of buds appear.  The spaces between the plants are narrow, making the viewer feel as though they are surrounded by greenery. The presence of the plants transforms the viewer's experience, offering a momentary escape into a virtual yet vividly alive landscape and merging natural forms with digital technology. 

The installation recalls the history of this site before colonization, when the Lenape people used this area as a fishing and planting site called Sapponckanikan—meaning "tobacco field." The choice of tobacco as the central element of the artwork holds deep cultural significance. Tobacco was, and remains, a sacred herb used in ceremonial practices by the Lenape people. The plants in the installation evoke this sacred history and honor the Lenape people's deep and enduring relationship with the land, their cultural practices, and history that predates the arrival of European colonizers. In this artwork, the artist resists the erasure of Indigenous histories and asserts their enduring relevance within contemporary spaces by recalling the Lenape tobacco field that once grew at this site.  

As the viewer moves through the space, the augmented reality plants seem to shift and sway, enhancing the sensation of walking through a natural field. The experience is both intimate and expansive as if you could reach out and push through the layers of virtual landscape, feeling the brush of leaves against you. The density of the plants creates a space that is immersive and enclosed, evoking the sense of being surrounded by nature in all directions—a place where the boundaries between the real and the digital, the wild and the curated, blur into one.