Antrophoflora

Anthropoflora introduces three young artists’ new works that are the results of a shared thought process. The exhibited works examine contact zones between human and plant societies from various perspectives. By anthropoflora we mean, on the one hand, those very concrete spaces where plants and humans are mutually dependent on each other: public parks, community gardens, balcony planters, bonsai greenhouses, agriculture, national parks, or biotech labs experimenting with new hybrids. On the other hand, anthropoflora is also the discursive space where we shape our concepts of planthood with the help of metaphors, similes, or ideologies.

The binaries of minority – majority, immigration – emigration, democracy – dictatorship, community – individual, public space – private space play a central role in organizing our concepts of human societies, and could offer interesting parallels when applied to plant communities. For several years now, Kitti Gosztola, Gábor Klima and Kata Tranker have been concerned with human/botanical co-existence, focusing on themes such as trees mutilated by human activity, or urban weed communities consisting of numerous different species. This exhibition, featuring all three artists, opens up a new phase in this work process and further examines connections between human and plant existence. Furthermore, beyond an anthropocentric idea of the plant world based on metaphors and parallels, Anthropoflora also sketches out the image of flora as something inherently valuable and worthy of protection.

Maja & Reuben Fowkes will coordinate a reading group related to the exhibition on 25 September at 7PM.