Iman Datoo

Kinnomic BotanyFilm, Installation, Digital, Archive, Research2020-3

Kinnomic Botany: Freeing the Potato from it’s Scientific and Colonial ties (2020-3) is a video, participatory installation, and research. The project sets out a vision of a parallel botanical world through the ‘eyes’ of a potato. Entered through a clay pot, the landscape makes visual a system of mapping that encompasses what has long been lost from the potato’s history, while offering new pathways to connect with the plant world through personal and tacit experience.

Kinnomic Botany was supported and exhibited by the Eden Project, Cornwall, as part of Super Natural at The Core Gallery, Eden Project, Par.

It has been featured in exhibitions such as Mapping the Cartographic at Drugo More Gallery, Rijeka, and On a Table, Over Time at The Plumb, Toronto.

As a species that crossed the Atlantic from Peru, the potato is subject to a typical hero story - the unexpected reward reaped by conquistadors on their exhibitions to Peru in search of gold. Instead, they returned with the potato. The result, a spread of potatoes emerging from a narrow genetic bottleneck, and a nomenclature to represent a new order over territories, borders, and non-human bodies.

Potato Pot, film still from Kinnomic Botany
The Kinnomic Botanical Garden, film still from Kinnomic Botany

Word Origins map for kinnomics; a counter-field to ‘economics’. It draws from Donna Harraway’s offering to ‘make kin’.
Verso: Is My Name Domesticated? – A research map tracing the geographic evolution of the word "potato" across and between languages.

Recto: Seasonal Cycles of Potato Cultivation:
a) In the genetic lab,  to cultivate the perfect French fry.
b) In the field, comunally, guided by astronomical principles.

The potato is a multi-world.
Travelling through the rips and

tears of geographic expansion.
Pulled through new lands,

to new lands.
A settler and immigrant of 5 parts,

4 lost.



  • But now it’s time to re(remember),
  • I am more than my tuber.
  • I am my seed,
  • my flower,
  • my fruits,
  • my roots.



The film

  • Digital claymation, 10 mins

  • Animation and narration by the Artist.




‘Kinnomic Botany' installed at the 'Super Natural' exhibition, Eden Project, Cornwall, 2022
‘Making a Name' installed at the 'Super Natural' exhibition, Eden Project, Cornwall, 2022

  • The installation

  • Yukon Gold or yellow-as-the-tired-belly-of-the-lizard?

Displayed alongside the film, an interactive and collaborative audio-tactile installation invites participants to explore new and enriched vocabularies for naming and categorising plants through touch, imagination, and play.

Participants are encouraged to pick up a potato, trace their eyes, and consider the textures of their skin. From these sensations, they create a unique name. Examples include beige-wise-whale, a violet shaft of stardust, or as surprised as a lost soul.

Each name becomes a distilled form of knowledge - a record of an interaction, rooted in observation, and an antidote to reductionism.



Making a Name,  Workshops at Kindred Studios, Shepherd’s Bush, London. Read more about workshops & facilitation here.

baby bird, pink, delicate 
a violet shaft of stardust 
as surprised as a lost-soul 
beige-wise-whale 
auburn as a solemn human 
brown like a worried salamander sad as a dog black 
red like an angry bull 
brown like a squinty fish 
calm like some beige trousers 
creamy lizard potato 
orange soft crocodile 
blue like a wise frog 
violet like a distant lizard 
chestnut like a chill box turtle! ochre fiery porcupine 
as silly as a beige doggy-dolphin amber, tired like a tortoise
yellow as the tired belly of a lizard bewildered like a blue fish 
dusty-gold as an ambivalent dragon


Potato names gathered, 2021-present

Selected Projects❶ 100-year Care Plan ❷ Movement is Natural ❸ Kinnomic Botany ❹ Planetary Commons ❺ Emergent Knowledge Bureau ❻ A Map of Southcombe Gardens ❼ Soil-brain, Gut-brain