To keep a clear head from the grief over what’s going on in my birthplace since February 2022 – I look to plants. It’s always been about the plants, the family having worked on land, practising household herbalism, and, since about 2015, using plants as a medium and main protagonists of the narratives in my paintings and participatory performances.

Considering the hierarchy of art genres (still life – feminine and basic, history painting – ostentatious and highly valued), the entanglement of ‘alive’ and ‘dead’ in these paintings is not just still life, but more like future history painting. Because it does both: wishes for abundance, reminds of fleetingness of the life passing, as well as imagines the necessary violence in negotiation for coexistence between the plants and the humans.