scraps, crumbs, bits, sprouts, seeds, shells, rocks, thoughts,

2023


Installation (materials: textile, rocks, pressed foraged plants, alder wood, drawings, various natural artefacts)

Presented at the Gerrit Rietveld Graduation Show 2023, Amsterdam




Horsetail is a small plant with a peculiar hairy look. If you have ever attempted to dig it up while weeding you would know that it’s remarkably hardy. In overlooked corners of the city the ribbed shoots appear through sediment in sidewalks while few mention its story as a prehistoric plant most likely eaten by dinosaurs. Somewhere in time between urban sceneries and paleozoic landscapes more plants appeared, disappeared, evolved and transformed into countless morphologies.

In a shifting habitat alienated from primary resources, I started a collection of natural artifacts. Inspired by the practice of foraging it became a small ritual for myself, in which every finding became a carrier of a memory or a long forgotten story. The dynamic pace of the city didn’t seem to resonate with this unhurried activity - so I constructed my own environment, of shelf structures and systems, most likely mystifying fo many: a laboratory for close observation, a slow-moving space for slow-moving thoughts. Carrier bags and pockets became vessels for tales, which I carefully collected alongside pebbles and bittercress.

Recognizing a plant can be like encountering an old friend and once you learn how to forage, you can take the knowledge with you wherever you go; a toolbox, training the ability to make memories with a place. This wasn’t meant as a productive activity to retrieve food, but instead it became a hybrid practice gathering ancient stories and fragments of foreign landscapes. All of it, somehow, to find a sense of belonging in a space where nothing belongs.