permeable boundaries @Down to Earth, Biennale 8
9th February - 30th April 2023
2022-2023
8th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporaty Art, ‘Down to Earth’ exhibition
Curation Yannis Bolis Domna Gounari, Areti Leopoulou, Theodore Markoglou,
Thouli Misirloglou, Hercules Papaioannou, Katerina Syroglou
Momus Museum Alex Mylona
“Why Look at Plants?” - This question is cleverly addressed by the ongoing work titled “Permeable Boundaries” by Katerina Moschou. Focused on the urgent need to create the conditions for a sustainable future, the visual artist proposes a reexamination of the relationship between humans and nature, emphasizing the necessity to
understand and support living organisms and ecosystems.
Simultaneously, the work reprocesses their reconnection through disruptive mechanisms of resilience and survival that could be shared by all living beings on the planet.
It delves into the data of botanical science concerning the plant biosphere, one of the fundamental regulatory factors of the environment, highlighting the contemporary art’s inclination to process information from various scientific fields. The installation comprises two painted designs and a sculptural composition: a wooden frame with a surface traversed by small forms of silicone rubber resembling agave leaves—the resilient succulent, also known as the “immortal plant.”
The permeable boundaries reflect ideal conditions of interconnectedness, sharing, and coexistence through forms, lines, and materials that sometimes distinctly and sometimes indistinctly compose systems both on paper and in the surrounding world. The permeable boundaries, soft and porous, facilitate communication, exchange, transition from one to another: the lines curve to embrace stones, penetrate deep into the soil, convey messages carried by fungi, and eventually resurface to encounter plants in continuous growth, while the forms continue to evolve along with the leaves.
The ideal condition of coexistence will persist as long as humans perceive and function as a kind of intermediary among others, and as long as the human experience
remains just one aspect, a narrative of this world.
text by Domna Gounari