Pressed Leaves and Brittle Petals
Shown in Learning from Nature? – Botany curated by Török Krisztián Gábor, Süli-Zakar Szabolcs, Horányi Attila and Vékony Dorottya at Modem, Debrecen, Hungary, 2024 - 2025
Shown in Learning from Nature? – Botany curated by Török Krisztián Gábor, Süli-Zakar Szabolcs, Horányi Attila and Vékony Dorottya at Modem, Debrecen, Hungary, 2024 - 2025
The two-channel video installation by Thea Lazär, who mainly produces multimedia works, using the power and malleability of storytelling focuses on the aspects of extrusion as a preservationist cultural technique in relation to personal memory and remembering.
Rather than the positivist collecting-categorisation praxis of science that views nature as curiosity (her-baria, botanical gardens, natural history museums) and colonisation (expropriation of indigenous plants), she offers a more sensual and sensitive approach by highlighting the meanings of the preservation of flora through compression that focus on the relationship between the individual and the environment, based on evocation and reanimation. The various pressed flower petals and leaves, which act against plant blindness, also referring to the pedagogical practice developed for secondary school students, especially in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, can capture a joyful moment, remind us of certain loved ones, significant places, events, or even promote commemoration. This context is highlighted by the 3D animation of flowers with sophisticated design, the use of Emily Dickinson's herbarium, but also by her poem (A Light Exists in Spring), which celebrates the romantic topos of spring as a continuous rebirth and the survival of life, through which nature as a unique monument and monument as a specific nature can be revealed.
Text by Edward Kovács
Rather than the positivist collecting-categorisation praxis of science that views nature as curiosity (her-baria, botanical gardens, natural history museums) and colonisation (expropriation of indigenous plants), she offers a more sensual and sensitive approach by highlighting the meanings of the preservation of flora through compression that focus on the relationship between the individual and the environment, based on evocation and reanimation. The various pressed flower petals and leaves, which act against plant blindness, also referring to the pedagogical practice developed for secondary school students, especially in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, can capture a joyful moment, remind us of certain loved ones, significant places, events, or even promote commemoration. This context is highlighted by the 3D animation of flowers with sophisticated design, the use of Emily Dickinson's herbarium, but also by her poem (A Light Exists in Spring), which celebrates the romantic topos of spring as a continuous rebirth and the survival of life, through which nature as a unique monument and monument as a specific nature can be revealed.
Text by Edward Kovács
Photo credit: Dávid Biró
