32 artists flood the Bucharest galleries with green

“Ecologies of Care and Healing” [Ecologiile grijii și îngrijirii] was a significant event with a botanical theme, based on interdisciplinary research in contemporary art, architecture, landscaping, and horticulture. A broad collaboration between artists, horticulturists, and architects laid the foundation for a large-scale exhibition, divided among three galleries in Bucharest. Nicolae Comănescu, Ciprian Mureșan, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Andreea Medar, Ana Maria Micu, and Roman Tolici were among the 32 artists who exhibited their works in the galleries of Strata, Mobius, and Leilei in Bucharest during the month of September 2023.

Overall, the event represented a holistic exploration of the relationships between human creativity, environmental stewardship, and the cultivation of spaces, fostering a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness between art, nature, and care.

The way we relate and interact with plants is marked by the nature/culture opposition that places man as the “measure of all things” outside nature, at the top of the hierarchy of all species. In the usual definitions, nature is imagined as a matter imbued with specifically feminine attributes: mysterious, maternal, nurturing, ever-changing, unstable, and chaotic. The word “nature” in Romanian comes from Latin, from the word “natura”, derived from the past participle of the verb “nascere” (to give birth), i.e. “nato”. This root is common to the word used for “nature” in most languages spoken in Europe. The imagination of nature in European culture is based on the capacity for rebirth every spring. The collective body of vegetation is symbolically seen in the paradigm of regeneration, which places death in the continuum of life and creates the illusion of immortality. Thus, in the Anthropocene, nature is an inexhaustible raw material. Nature’s life cycles are dependent on a multitude of environmental factors. Today, massive pollution of the planet’s soil and water, deforestation, intensive agriculture, loss of biodiversity, species extinction, climate change, and other human actions are making it harder than ever to regenerate natural worlds. Michael Marder, one of Europe’s most active contemporary naturalist philosophers, remarks: “any future philosophy of nature must carry the realization of environmental finitude as a birthmark on the body of its thought.” Marder argues for the urgent need to change the way we relate to nature and argues, like the American philosopher Timothy Morton, for a radical change in thinking: “the very idea of nature, which many hold dear, will have to wither away into an ecological state of human society. Strange as it may sound, the idea of nature stands in the way of ecological forms of culture, philosophy, politics, and art.”

The guided incursion of artists, architects and botanists into the complexity of human relations with plant nature unveils the mechanisms by which flora, in the service of humanity, is imagined, used, consumed and destroyed. Plants provide the breath of the ecosystem of which we are a part of. This living shell of the earth’s crust has been reduced to the status of a resource that is freely exploited for human survival. The utility of plants concerns all aspects of human life, from food, clothing, shelter, physical and mental health. The plants that cover and feed us, breathe with us or delight our eyes are understood primarily as raw materials. The section on utilitarian plants highlights aspects of living with botanical nature, from the study of agricultural or gardening practices to formal, aesthetic observation. Living with botanical nature is indispensable to the life of all species, while human consumption habits jeopardize plant life cycles. Beginning with Neolithic agriculture, Timothy Morton examines how the relationship between humans and nature has moved in the direction of domestication and exploitation, underlying today’s advanced state of destruction. In all sections of the exhibition, the subject is approached in a multifaceted and interdisciplinary way.  The combination of works follows principles inspired by attributes associated with nature over time, namely: stylistic diversity, accommodation of difference, chaos, or some maternal qualities.

Useful, poisonous, ritual or aphrodisiac plants

The exhibition was divided into four sections, inspired by pop and folklore culture and common understanding: useful, poisonous, aphrodisiac, and ritual plants.

“The Ecologies of Care and Healing” starts with a series of questions aimed at the relationship between man and nature, discerned from the homonym of the word care. Following our care for plants—plants used for nurturing or healing in the face of current ecological disasters—the exhibition introduced a complex perspective on the role of flora in human life and vice versa. Each section of the exhibition included live plants and architectural models of constructions that we use to grow and care for them, as well as a series of contemporary artworks that speak polyphonically and subjectively nuance botanical and architectural research.

Imaginary paradise is always green. A vegetable heart, pulsating to the rhythm of absolute balance. Retaining the dynamics of the post-industrial period, urbanization continuously reshapes spaces, transforms ecosystems, and alters the evolution of life by altering the discrete structures that sustain it. Plant blindness is the new mantra at the edge of the Anthropocene, a time when the closest connection with nature is mediated mainly by the fruit and vegetable section of the nearest supermarket. In post-human paradigms, technology beguiles the nostalgic with false rendezvous points, lush universes built through digitization, and VR solutions that conjure raw green fibers from the inventory of vestiges of a passing time. Usually understood to be at the bottom of the hierarchy of life, plants are in fact vitally important, carry stories and messages, and can become powerful allies for various social groups. While art remains the most delicate method of rewriting this history in contemporary times.

The project`s was inaugurated with a symposium on horticulture and architecture, which took place during the Bucharest Horticulture Days in the Aula Magna “Petre Sebeșanu Aurelian” hall of the Faculty of Horticulture in Bucharest on May 5, 2023. Conference schedule: Prof. Dr. Vera Dobrescu: “The landscape, for everyone’s understanding”; Stardust architects*: “Domestic rituals. Discourses on Kitchens and Gardens”; Head of Work Dr. Vasilica Luchian: “Medicinal Plants: Legends and Benefits for Human Health”; Nicolas Triboi: “Contemplation and Inspiration: The Necessity of the Promenade and the Development of the Capacity of Observation for Designers.”

During September 2023, a workshop on medicinal plants was organized at Strata Gallery, coordinated by the Head of Work. Dr. Luchian Vasilica and two conferences on architecture, ecology, and nature, given by Eliza Yokina and Daniel Tellman were organized in Mobius Gallery.