Press Release

The group show Orangerie der Fürsorge (Orangery of Care) takes potted plants as its point of departure to interconnect ecological, feminist, and postcolonial issues. Grouped around a site-specific installation on the care and propagation of discarded houseplants, thirteen works by contemporary artists address the relationship between humans and plants in urban contexts.

International ongoing exhibitions

Orangery of Care

nGbK, Berlin (Germany)

12.09 - 17.11.2024

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House plants are entangled in the colonial history of botanical gardens and the industrial destruction of habitats, but also in privatized practices of life preservation. Today, as in the bourgeois culture of the nineteenth century, the domesticated forms of displaced plant species are still treated as status symbols. Looking after ficuses elasticas, monsteras, and yuccas is viewed as unpolitical housework. Rethinking the coexistence of humans and plants means questioning the fetishization and exoticization of plants, as well as their role in the naturalization of (post-)colonial conditions—while also reflecting on the importance of regenerative and caring activities in the preservation of ecosystems.

How does the health of plants reflect human behavior? How are encounters with plants influenced by (post-)colonial conditions? Can rethinking human-plant relationships also lead to a relearning of relations among humans?

With these questions in mind, the artist group PARA has conceived a greenhouse that gives an account of households and offices as spaces animated by plants, speculates on their virtual survival, and makes use of the principle of friendship for plant propagation. Members of PARA form the nGbK work group developing the exhibition. The curatorial concept for the “Orangery of Care” is based on their installation: In the group show, video- and spatial installations, sculptures, paintings, and textile works explore different modes of relationships between humans and plants, revealing the tensions between protection and control inherent in the practice of keeping and caring for plants, as well as exploring its transformative potential.

Works by Anne Marie Maes and Margarita Maximova, Bethan Hughes, Marlene Heidinger, Hoda Tawakol and Sophie Utikal examine the basic conditions of life, limits on resources of care, and constructions of nature and femininity. Films by Jesse McLean and Rob Crosse explore the various types of care required by plants that cohabit with humans, and systems of mutual support, while Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten question the technical manufacturability of artificial nature via idealized notions of biohacking. Samir Laghouati-Rashwan and Julia Löffler highlight the ongoing impact of colonialism when humans exploit and capitalize plants, while the video work by Laure Prouvost caressingly puts itself at the service of the creatures that surround it. Works by Shirin Sabahi and Dunja Krcek deal with the ambivalence of gardens between utopia and dystopia, and with the relational space between humans and plants that results when the sight of flowers generates an experience of beauty.

The accompanying program of events and outreach consists of performances, talks, and activations of the space, and also takes the biodiversity of the surrounding cityscape into consideration.

Exhibition with works by Rob Crosse, Marlene Heidinger, Bethan Hughes, Dunja Krcek, Samir Laghouati-Rashwan, Julia Löffler, Anne Marie Maes and Margarita Maximova, Jesse McLean, PARA, Laure Prouvost, Lex Rütten & Jana Kerima Stolzer, Shirin Sabahi, Hoda Tawakol, Sophie Utikal

Exhibition 12 September - 17 November 2024. neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), 1st floor, entrance via escalator, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 11/13 - 10178 Berlin (Germany).

Shrin Sabahi, Muted Fanfare for the Shy (still), 2013. Courtesy of the artist & VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn