Saguaro

10″ x 10″ x 1.5″
Mixed media: acrylic on birch panel with dimensional elements in wood and metal.

In “Saguaro” (2024), the motif returns, but the treatment is radically contemporary. The cactus is rendered as a stylized form, green against fields of ochre and black and neutral tones. Yet the cactus is punctuated by raised elements, spikes that appear as both literal protrusions and as signs of defense. The saguaro, a plant that survives through adaptation, becomes an emblem of resilience, but also of the way organisms exist within harsh environments. In a time of ecological stress, the cactus can be read as a figure for endurance, for the capacity to persist without romanticizing suffering. Côté’s cactus is not sentimental. It is structural. It is built, like her other forms, from a grammar of edges and planes. The work thus suggests that resilience is not a mythic trait but a constructed relationship to environment, to scarcity, to time.