Emergent/cy

“Emergent/cy” is a group exhibition curated by Maggessi/Morusiewicz and Marilyn Volkman. It features artistic works centering on plants and plant life in relation to the currently popular issues in environmental ethics and vegetal ecologies, broadly pertaining to the reframing of the term “climate change” into “climate emergency” and “climate crisis.” This change illustrates the outcomes of the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit discussions, which proposed the revision in the mainstream ways of thinking of the catastrophic changes resulting from people’s unlimited extraction of Earth’s natural resources. This pessimistic realization––that human civilization will likely end due to its own action––informs Anthropocene studies, which recognizes the overall human failure to provide environmental sustainability due to the over-reliance on fossil fuels whose burning brings about catastrophically high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. A significant area of interest related to Anthropocene studies is plants and plant life, which underlie several relatively new and emerging fields of research, such as environmental humanities, critical plant studies, human geography, and political ecology, to name just a few. These fields propose useful analytical frameworks of understanding the multi-layered relationship between humans and plants, also in the contexts of individual nation-state policies for plant cultivation, framed as a vital element of national heritage missions. One outcome of this interest in the diverse agency of plants is a critical reframing of the conventionally Western way of thinking of plants as a non-sentient, passive, and therefore “lower” forms of being. In this way, plants are thought of not merely as ornaments or as metaphors that describe aspects of human life, but, increasingly, as entities that people themselves can learn from, as organisms whose agency far exceeds what is conventionally imagined as their subservient function in human life. We recognize this shift as a red thread that runs across the exhibition’s artworks and artistic practices, which demonstrate the artists’ diverse forms of relationality with plants, while reflecting on their agency in specifically situated (time, place) contexts.

A theme that recurs through some of the exhibition’s works is the use of specific plants as symbols of nation-state identities and belongings. The protagonist of Celia Irina González’s work is the banana, a symbol of Cuban national identity; the artist traces the process of banana pruning, used by Cuban agricultural workers to accelerate the plant’s growth, and reflects, through it, on the violent socializing processes employed in Cuban re-education centers for children and adolescents. Kenneth Constance Loe focuses on Bua Cek, a critically endangered species of fern, which, in Singapore, grows exclusively in the training areas of the Singapore Armed Forces, which are restricted from public access; Loe presents the fern as a silent witness to the processes involved in mandatory military service, which submits civilian bodies to disciplinary regimes. Drawing from the artist’s personal migratory experience, Przemek Branas’ work draws from his daily practice that he has sustained since his relocation from Poland to Portugal; Branas collects and dries local plants, which he then uses as material for collage compositions, objects, and installation, some of which imagine hybrid beast-like entities that combine elements of human, animal, and plant worlds. Oriented around the theme of plant regeneration, Luiza Prado engages with the history of silphium, a plant that is believed to have been extinct for almost two thousand years, used in Ancient Greece and Rome for aphrodisiac, contraceptive, abortifacient, and other medicinal purposes; her research on silphium was spurred by the recent appearance of a new plant in Turkey’s Anatolia, Ferula drudeana, which closely resembles the extinct species. Also taking on the theme of extinction, Liljana Mead Martin explores the shifting forces that shape landscapes under climate change, with a focus on Canada’s primary and old growth forests. Burning, dyeing, printing, and layering with cedar and canvas, Martin’s recent work evokes the imprints of symbiotic plant and tree species, reflecting on the urgency of recognizing environmental change and fostering more conscious relationships with the land and its future.

curated by Maggessi/Morusiewicz & Marilyn Volkman

participating artists: Przemek Branas, Kenneth Constance Loe, Celia Irina González, Liljana Mead Martin, Luiza Prado

The project “To collectively disappear is no more than to acknowledge that we have roots we can no longer see,” within which this exhibition takes place, was made possible with the support of Stadt Wien Kultur and the 15th district Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus. The exhibition “Emergent/cy” was also funded by the Kulturbudget des Bezirks Neubau.