Imagine your skin as a leaf
Joseca (Yanomami), Untitled, 2004 - 2019 drawing, pencil and felt-tip pen on paper
Rooted Beings ties together the severed threads between humans and the roots of all beings – the plant and fungal kingdoms.
Weaving together textiles, sound, larger-than-life plant installations and botanical archives partnered with Indigenous knowledge, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz and Emily Sargent invite us to reimagine our relationship with the plant world.
Walking into the space is immediately grounding. Ingela Ihrman’s passionflower costume sets the scene – exploring womanhood, humanness, intimacy and attraction. The dress was part of ‘The Inner Ocean’, a performance piece in which the flower blossoms and the audience are invited to drink its ‘nectar’ in a symbiotic act of pollination.
“draw a cosmic breath with your whole body”
Within the darkened room exist a myriad interconnected art forms. Jain teachings depicted in a mandala convey that all animals, plants and elements have a spirit – reminding us to be both gentle and kind. Birdsong mixes with the soft murmuring of holographic fans, creating an elemental feeling of airiness.
The space reflects an ecosystem of complexities and contrasts around our co-evolution with the plant kingdom. Romantic botanical illustrations meet a violent colonial backdrop. South America’s spiritual and medicinal uses of plants, alongside experimental ethnobotany, are depicted by Patricia Domínguez’s ‘Vegetal Matrix’.
We are invited “to draw a cosmic breath with your whole body” and “imagine the skin is a leaf,” in a guided meditation of ‘Vegetal Transmutation’ written by philosopher Michael Marder. This journey takes us beyond our immediate surroundings. Our breath becomes a respiratory conversation with the world around us, and “an infinite contemplation” with the elements.
In contrast to the soft textures and curves of Ihrman’s ‘Gut Weed’, the brittle bones of building wreckages lie caged across the floor. Excavated from vegetation by youth projects, these are places to sit and interact with – whilst exploring our artificial separation from the wildness.
This exhibition is a refreshing reminder to slow down, to be rooted and to listen deeply. Our plant and fungal allies silently offer us their gifts, and in symbiosis we must learn to love and respect them as breathing, feeling, sentient beings and teachers.
