Plant-powered Art: Highlights from an Organic Exhibition where Nature also Creates
Capsicium by fuzzy earth, 2021, (c) the artist
Plants, microbes and living organisms are no strangers in the gallery. In the last years, we have seen a boom of bioart and future-oriented exhibitions from the Royal Academy in London to the Anchorage Museum of Alaska. Unlike our natural resources, exhibitions highlighting the voices of our environment seem to be an inexhaustible source of interest. As it turns out, there is still a lot that living organisms can tell us. From musical kombucha to the mass-production of bell pepper plants and grass that adapts to mobile living spaces, artists are pushing the boundaries of art, science and imagination.
A remarkable group exhibition titled Power of Plants showcases Hungarian and Polish artists in MANK Gallery, in Szentendre, Hungary. The show presents a vision of the future where artists are not just illuminating the problems of the anthropocene, but also offer solutions and urge us to live in harmony with our environment. The exhibition poses the questions: What is the role of plants in our lives, and what important lessons can we learn from them? Let’s explore what five Hungarian-based artists have to say!
(Re)Connecting with our Environment
The far-reaching impact of climate change has permeated into public consciousness over the last years, becoming an omni-present threat to our lives and future. As more of us consider our daily existence within our environment, the more we realise that our eco-system hangs in a delicate balance where everyone and everything plays an important part.
Stopping, or even slowing down climate collapse will require actions that involve larger social structures to change, new climate policymaking, corporate social responsibility, progress in scientific research, as well as smaller individual actions. Recently, it was the United Nations COP26 conference that tried to set real targets for a future with zero-carbon emission, but instead of breaking new ground, what emerged was a measly effort that has been criticised as demanding too little and too late. What has come across, however, is that staying engaged with the issue of climate change is necessary. We need to question how corporations and our individual actions within our societies impact, and will continue to impact the future of our Earth. How can artists and creatives address the climate crisis, and in turn, help us connect with our changing environment?
Power of Plants
“The force that lies within plants and natural flora is manifold: they provide us with vital oxygen, plants can nourish and nurture us, plants can affect our mental health and they can also help us to preserve memories. They also provide shelter, can be used as a renewable source of energy, and this is just the beginning. The displayed artworks help to highlight these functions in MANK Gallery”
The multifacetedness of plants is well represented in the exhibition, which provides a complex and exhaustive experience to the visitors, drawing on design objects and experimental bioart projects, as well as more traditional approaches of photography and painting. The visitors also encounter artworks that develop organically through time, or in some cases wither away. Some can be tasted and smelled whilst others involve all of our sensory receptors at once.
“Through this complex experience, we hope to convey our message and firmly imprint it in the visitor's memory,” Tünde sums up the main message of the exhibition.
Musical Organisms
The duo of Adrienn Újházi and Marija Šumarac have brought to life a project titled Microbial Concert, a multi-part artwork consisting of a video and sound recording, images, and a suspended kombucha fungi produced by fermentation. Kombucha which is a substance that is derived from scoby is currently a very fashionable microbe due to its beneficial qualities on health and its potential in material-research. In this project the creators have used it to generate sound through recording its growth, as well as making photographic documentation of the microbial evolution. It is the visual impulses which were put through a system that produces sound, thereby adding an auditory layer. By manipulating the formation of the living biofilm, they used sound signals to sample the scoby layer, studying the effect of sound on the fungus itself.
Microbial Concert by Adrienn Ujházi and Marija Šumarac, 2021, video, organic material, digital print, (c) the artist
The sampled sounds and the photographic documentation of the biofilm are exhibited together in the gallery in the presence of the scoby 'mother culture' suspended from the ceiling.
Throughout the exhibition, the scoby organism continues to evolve in response to sound effects and the bacteria found in the gallery environment. During its realisation, the project becomes a long-term vision in constant metamorphosis. Its pungent acidic smell wafts through the gallery, reminding the viewer that what they are seeing and hearing is a living and breathing organism that has the capacity to respond to environmental change in the same ways that humans do.
Installation view of Microbial Concert by Adrienn Újházi and Marija Šumarac, 2021, (c) MANK Gallery
Shared Spaces
In Meadow in space Bernadett Furó, a young social designer, explores nature in an urban context; the interaction between buildings and plants. Moving away from traditional gardens, Meadow in space is a spatial organisation system that builds on the relationship between ceramics and plants. By using hardy succulents and sturdy ivy plants, she is able to offer us a vision of how plant life and urban spaces can live in harmony.
Bernadett was interested in how plants can be placed in built environments in such a way that they form an organic whole with the site, both visually and atmospherically. Her aim is to make a neutral interior space more homely and liveable. As our cities continue to develop and more and more space is taken up by human activity, plants are increasingly pushed to the peripheries. Perhaps our buildings will look as Bernadett has imagined them, where the focus is not on the demarcation of plant- and human-spaces, but the unification of the two.
Meadow in Space by Bernadett Furó, 2019, hand-pressed and patterned fireclay, (c) the artist and MANK Gallery
Prospects for Growth
Bettina Módra is a young Hungarian designer and environmental activist whose work reflects the fundamental need for green environments around us. In her artwork titled Green Touch, the rhythm of grass growth is the dominant feature, presenting a different image of the surface everyday, thereby spotlighting the beauty of nature. The installation can be freely shaped by visitors using seeds, highlighting the individual responsibility we all have in creating a more liveable and greener future through a communal effort.
A layer of wool is the substrate on which the grass grows, providing a fertile environment for the plant. It also helps to make visible the evolution of the grass-pattern, allowing the entire surface to be lifted, moved and inspected. This way, the work does not become waste after the exhibition: placed in a natural environment, the conditions decide which parts will survive and which components will decompose completely. Could this also become a way to make our green spaces transportable for the future? Perhaps as our environments shift and large open spaces become scarce we will see innovative solutions such as the one offered by Bettina.
Green Touch by Bettina Módra, 2021, growing grass on wool surface, (c) the artist
What Would the Plants Say?
fuzzy earth is a creative practice formed of Tekla Gedeon and Sebastian Gschanes who are represented in the exhibition with artworks from their project Not Quite California Wonder, a series of artworks that explore an optimistic collective vision as a response to the ongoing climate challenges.
Installation view of Capsicium by fuzzy earth, 2021, (c) the artist and MANK Gallery
One short film in the exhibition introduces details of contemporary greenhouse environments from the perspective of the bell pepper plant. The narrative opens a window to the isolated agricultural lands and invites all visitors to listen to agro-botanical species and to reconnect with the altered spaces of food production. The audio recording was created during greenhouse visits in spring 2021. It presents the rich sound scene of an entirely synthesized agricultural environment: a composition of planned, coincidental, natural and technical elements. As well as the sounds and visuals of the greenhouse, there is a mocked up version within the gallery, which reintroduces the viewer to the real-life plant. It is a realisation of how detached we are from the way our food is produced.
The Illusion of the Natural World
Éva Bubla is an artist, activist and educator, whose works are concerned with the current ecological crisis. Her work in the exhibition belongs to the series titled Designated Breathing Zone. The different site- and community-specific versions of Designated Breathing Zone aim to raise awareness about the importance of clean air, the impact of human activities on our climate, the air purifying role of green spaces and the healing power of (wild) plants through installative spaces, objects and performative practices.
The visitor is invited to smell Éva’s work, which is a large glass amphora with a pump that allows us to smell the contents held within the glass object. The smell of the moss and the wild carrot essential oil, which Éva prepared during a Sardinian artist residency together with the local women of Rimettiamo Radici, mix together, emulating the scents of the wilderness but here captured in the seemingly sterile white cube space of the gallery. Moreover, the fact that the wild carrot is only present in the work in its distilled, disembodied essence form is a stern reminder that many of our native plants are disappearing due to the climate collapse. Will we soon only be able to engage with the sensory-memories of these plants?
Designated Breathing Zone by Éva Bubla, 2021, mixed media installation. Photo credit: Éva Bubla: Designated Breathing Zone - Local Scents, 2021, Giornate del Respiro, Fluminimaggiore, Sardinia, Photo by Laura Farneti /Sardegno Teatro
Why is art important in our fight against climate change?
The exhibition is like a window onto alternative solutions, offering a glimpse into what our future may hold, which, depending on the artist’s own interpretation could be a negative or a positive prediction.
The Power of Plants exhibition will be open in MANK Gallery, Szentendre, Hungary until the 4th December 2021, offering visitors the chance to interrogate their own relationship with the plant world and the environment at large, as well as reflect on the important messages that these works offer.
An exhibition is a space in which we are free to experiment and confront ideas, which is even more true when thinking about contemporary experimental art. If the Power of Plants exhibition makes us reflect more deeply about our relationship with our natural environment, from the food we eat to humanity’s impact on the natural world, it will have been a success.