Aneta Rostkowska will talk about the project „Floraphilia: On the Interrelations of the Plant World, Botany and Colonialism“ dedicated to the political meaning of plants. She will focus on two exhibitions: „Floraphilia. Plants as Archives“, realized at the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne in 2018 and „Floraphilia. Revolution of Plants“, which was presented as part of the Warsaw Biennale in 2019 and at the Temporary Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art in Cologne in 2020. The first one illuminated the social and political aspects of the history of plants, botany and botanical gardens. Artworks displayed in the show referred to plants’ co-option throughout colonial history and history in general, as well as to their economic, feminist and migratory contexts. The second exhibition conceptualized plants as a possible inspiration for political activity—with their resilience, adaptability and communication skills as well as their indifference to state borders. The exhibition space was turned into an anarchist laboratory of a revolution-to-come, which would become possible through interspecies exchange. Both exhibitions encouraged to challenge the common conceptualisation of a plant as a mechanistic thing that only reacts to simple stimuli, opening up a vision of significant continuity between humans and plants, which—dynamic, breathing and growing—possess intentionality and even memory.
Aneta Rostkowska is a curator, a graduate of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam. She is pursuing experimental curatorial practices in which politically relevant storytelling develops through carefully constructed sensual environments. Rostkowska studied philosophy, economics and art history in Kraków, Poznań, Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main. From 2016 to 2018 she worked as a curator at the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne. Since January 2019 she is a director of Temporary Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art in Cologne. This year, she has been invited as „Visiting Curator“ at the Künstlerhaus Bremen.
Lecture in cooperation with „Visiting Curators“, Künstlerhaus Bremen
> Unfortunately, the event has to be cancelled due to Corona.