The Badischer Kunstverein presents the first comprehensive exhibition in Germany devoted to the work of the artist and researcher Åsa Sonjasdotter. Sonjasdotter’s work is situated in the intersection of artistic research, ecological justice, feminism, and activist engagement in agriculture. Since the 2000s, she has been engaged in the re-activation of collaborative cultivation methods that subvert corporate monopolization. The invention of modern, colonial plant breeding techniques represented a break with traditional methods: knowledge was centralized by authoritarian structures, and farmers lost control.
Using film, photography and archival materials, Sonjasdotter traces the migratory movements of crops and re-animates old peasant knowledge of breeding practices. By cultivating forgotten and outlawed crops and engaging in close readings of archival material, it becomes possible to turn lost knowledge of the past and the present into re-existence. Sonjasdotter’s interest focuses on the complex relationship between plants and their (sensory) generosity toward humans and other beings. The works selected for the exhibition are also based, among other things, on crops familiar in the region around Karlsruhe (cabbage, potatoes, grain varieties). The title of the project, for example, refers to the way kale—which grows wild, cultivated, and rewilded in Ireland—became a nurturing remedy during British colonisation. The project Adretta enquires into the role of the potato of the same name, which was cultivated on a large scale in East Germany and the Soviet Union before being discarded by capitalist food systems; today, it serves post-Soviet subsistence farmers from Kazakhstan to Siberia as a staple food.
Curated by Anja Casser.
Das Land denen
George Clark, Jörg Gfrörer & Wolfgang Jung & Walter Krieg, Elke Marhöfer, Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca
The exhibition Das Land denen presents five documentary and artistic films in the atrium of the Badischer Kunstverein as well as at the intercultural project space COLA TAXI OKAY, all of which deal with the social, economic and ecological conditions of farming in a variety of ways. The selection of international films also addresses struggles around land rights and decolonization, and reflects upon image politics and narratives that are inscribed in landscapes and farming traditions, as well as in the film medium.
Die Enteignung by Jörg Gfrörer, Wolfgang Jung and Walter Krieg, produced in 1975 at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb), explores the impact of the industrialization of agriculture on part-time farmers in northern Germany who become dependent upon large-scale farms and food corporations. The extreme health hazards to which the workers of the Colombian flower industry are exposed are thematized in the second historical film, Marta Rodríguez’ and Jorge Silva’s Amor, mujeres y flores (1989). The new film by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Fala da Terra (2022), screened on 11. November at COLA TAXI OKAY, features the theatre ensemble Coletivo Banzeiros founded by members of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST). They highlight the power of collective resistance to the exploitation of nature and human beings.
Also focusing on practices of self-organization is George Clark’s film Sea of Clouds (2016), which investigates the relationship between Taiwan’s landscape and its history, using the reference to the clandestine use of rural cinema screenings. In her artistic work, Elke Marhöfer pursues an affective approach to the topic of species extinction. In Becoming Extinct (Wild Grass) of 2017, Marhöfer’s camera explores the vegetation found in the steppes of southern Russia in order to conceive a future characterized by an inclusive relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Curated by Florian Wüst.
Exhibition 06 October - 03 December 2023. Badischer Kunstverein, Waldstraße 3 - 76133 Karlsruhe (Germany). T +49 721 28226. Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–7pm, Saturday–Sunday 11am–5pm
![[1] Collage: Mercè Torres Ràfols and Åsa Sonjasdotter, made of archival material, National Folklore Collection, University College, Dublin, 2023. © Mercè Torres Ràfols and Åsa Sonjasdotter. [2] Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva, Amor, mujeres y flores, 1989. In Das Land denen. Photo: Jorge Silva and Fundación Cine Documental.](wpimages/wpac9b864e.gif "[1] Collage: Mercè Torres Ràfols and Åsa Sonjasdotter, made of archival material, National Folklore Collection, University College, Dublin, 2023. © Mercè Torres Ràfols and Åsa Sonjasdotter. [2] Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva, Amor, mujeres y flores, 1989. In Das Land denen. Photo: Jorge Silva and Fundación Cine Documental.")
