Family Portraits
Exhibition at the Klempenow castle, Germany, 2024
Family Portraits was an installation with digital prints on long-fibre paper shown in the main hall of the 11th century Klempenow Castle in Mecklenburg, in the northeast of Germany. Each print showed a photograph and a digital drawing of a plant that arrived to Europe, and thus in the area around the castle, after the castle had been built. All of the chosen plants are edible and have since become common parts of everyday diets. Some, like the potato, are even used as a derogatory term for the native inhabitants.
The plants were enlarged to human scale as portraits of ancestors in the castle’s main hall would be. At the same time, the exhibition commented on the current local rightward political turn. Finally, the installation was an appeal to look more closely at our non-human neighbours.