Floraphilia. Revolution of Plants.
at Biennale Warszawa, 2019
installation in public space
10 flags made out of waste textiles with printed texts set on the main street of Warsaw
3 window galleries sets at the Main street of Warsaw
The Kingdom.
A series of flags of the Kingdom of Flora. Made from leftovers and textile waste with the selected short fragments of texts from popular melodies, folk songs and nursery rhymes. Created as part of SURPLUS, a project about material and symbolic overproduction.
SURPLUS x Floraphilia.
On the windows, the artist Magda Buczek digs into discourses, lifestyle trends and modern ecologies to fish for new semantic fetishes concerning the world of flora. Her slogans are printed on used garments in a limited edition of ten.
The exhibition Floraphilia. Revolution of Plants frees the world of plants from the reactionary context of interior design magazines and eco-trends, revealing its emancipatory potential leading to social transformation. The space of Biennale Warsaw will turn into an anarchist laboratory of the revolution-to-come, which will become possible through interspecies exchange. Plants decorating our shelves and window sills will transform into sources of inspiration for political activity. We are fascinated by their resilience, adaptability and communication skills as well as their indifference to state borders. What follows is a questioning of the common understanding of plants as mechanical “things” that react solely to simple stimuli. Plants leave the lowest position in the hierarchy of beings, leading us to a vision of a fundamental continuity between humans and plants, the latter of which – dynamic, breathing and growing – are endowed with intentionality and even memory.
Photo documentation by Lars Juhl & Magda Buczek
