Observing wild herbaceous plants, which are often found in our area, I noticed how much their appearance changes during the process of growth and wilting. A young plant does not look like a flowering one, and a flowering one does not look like a fruiting one, and so on up the chain to the dried flower. And the variability of each species is different. Ivan-tea, for example, is a master of change, which is not the case with wormwood.
The first association that I thought of is the way a person's appearance changes at different stages of life, and it can be not only biological phases, but also the influence of external factors. The number of these changes is different for everyone, someone might have eight and someone might not have fifteen. Sometimes it seems to me that at these moments one personality dies and another is born inside the same body.
But why is it that everything that happens in nature we try on human beings. On the one hand, it is a natural way of knowing the world, on the other hand, the egocentrism of the dominant species, from which it is worth to get rid of in order to understand natural laws, accept their differentiation and stop treating other species in a consumerist way.
Usually, at the beginning of a study, it is customary for scientists to formulate a hypothesis and then refute it or prove it. I also decided to try to formulate my hypothesis despite the fact that the research is connected with visual, artistic images, because the outcome for me is not obvious and is a field for experimentation.
The thought that prompted the work on this project had to do with human beings and their ability to change. But following the life of one or more people is not possible for me because I am also a human being and this idea came too late. I thought that this limitation could be a new opportunity that would help not only me but also the viewer to discover a new world of living beings that are similar to us in some ways and yet have fundamental differences.
Every seven to ten years all cells in the human body change, except for some groups. And I see the image of an individual within one shell with constantly changing cellular composition, this shell permanently takes different forms. The same thing happens with plants, only it is much easier to trace these changes, because they happen many times and are repeated every year. Each of you probably remembers the juicy leaf of a young dill, which by the end of its life cycle turns into a hard stem with small leaves and a huge umbrella.
As a result, my research hypothesis is: "How many lives do each of my chosen plant species live? Can the intensity of an individual's cell turnover affect the survival rate of a population?".
The exhibition project includes:
84 photos
observation diary
map of observation sites
video performance for the exhibition
installation Human/Plant
video art "Through the silence of conversation"
patchwork quilt
The planned deadline for the project work completion is summer 2024.
