Ex Situ
“An encounter with plants – that extraordinary event in which we stand in utmost proximity to them, while at the same time not refusing them their alterity – may take place only on the presupposition that plant life possesses a distinct subjectivity.”
Michael Marder, “Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life”
“Ex situ” is a long-term photographic project exploring the spaces of greenhouses in botanical gardens. The map of meanings is very rich, stretching between the medieval monastery and the Renaissance university. Between the romantic myth and the Enlightenment gaze of the researcher.
Is it a temple or a prison?
A colonial fossil created for amusement?
Or perhaps an ark that will allow many species to survive in the future?
Each time I buy a ticket to a botanical garden, I enter the seductive space “beyond the wall,” separate, different, mysterious. After a walk, I have the impression that the powerful plants appear like Beings. They allow themselves to be admired with forbearance, yet one has the feeling that they are about to escape. That they will pierce the rigid frames of the greenhouse with their branches.
We are making irreversible changes on Earth. We are destroying the planet. Will botanical gardens one day be the only places with greenery? Will we go there as if to a temple? Will the Beings take revenge on us?
So far I have visited botanical gardens in Urbino, Naples, Florence, Siena, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Kraków, Poznań, Łódź, Warsaw, and Powsin.”