Céline Baumann: Queer Nature

The principle of "queer" can be found everywhere in nature. The exhibition at Gallery VI PER explores the little-known, often overlooked, and exceptionally intimate behaviors of the plant world. Celebrating the diversity of the plant kingdom means celebrating the multitude of shapes, genders, sexes, and colors around us. We live in a world that is constantly evolving, embracing a whole spectrum of values that are more varied than ever before. Preconceived patterns and one-sided opinions are increasingly struggling to respond to current events. So how can we embrace this diversity and overcome established archetypes? How can we confront entrenched values with our own experiences that allow for further forms of emancipation? In the Queer Nature project, we accept the idea that plants are our oldest teachers and we share stories of their knowledge. By opening a post-anthropocentric space for reflection, we challenge the belief that matter and intelligence should be separated, and perceive flora as something more than just a mere commodity. We explore the powers of trees, shrubs, flowers, and herbs as sources of inspiration that offer us alternatives to the way we behave and create, whether on the level of a given territory, public space, or private garden.

The Queer Nature exhibition consists of three parts. The Secret Life of Plants examines the forms of the plant world with its infinite variety of shapes, colors, textures, and scents. This extreme diversity is the result of evolution driven by sexual reproduction, which allows plants to adapt to climate change, soil conditions, or predators. Such a spectrum of possibilities can then be grasped within the framework of the "queer" phenomenon, referring to minorities that deviate from binary gender behavior. The Botanical Manufactory focuses on contemporary horticultural production that utilizes vegetative reproduction, or cloning, of growing parts of plants, such as branches, leaves, or parts of roots. However, these exact copies do not create new genetic material, thereby exposing subsequent identical generations to the risk of being completely eradicated by diseases, for example. Our houseplants, purchased in nurseries and florists in Prague or elsewhere in Europe, usually come from mass-produced cultivars in automated greenhouses. These greenhouses, along with botanical gardens, today represent a kind of upside-down Tower of Babel, concentrating plants from all over the planet in one place. The Third Landscape represents a somewhat different and independent flora that has emerged in the city. These are spontaneously growing vegetation that have learned to coexist with humans and grow near human dwellings, roads, and public spaces. They survive in complicated conditions thanks to their exceptionally effective reproductive strategies, often accustomed to mechanical destruction, and face many other traps of human activity. They create biodiversity all around us, even in the immediate vicinity of Gallery VI PER. The Third Landscape is an experiment carried out in the gallery's courtyard: we filled several barrels with soil obtained from the nearby surroundings. We chose places that the city has long excluded – the floodplains of Rohanský Island, where the ruins of buildings and backfill from nearby construction sites can be found, Karlín's railway embankments, and other forgotten corners. The diverse plants that subsequently appear on the seemingly bare layer of soil are evidence of the biodiversity of these places.

Céline Baumann (1984) is a French garden and landscape architect based in Switzerland. Personally interested in international cultural exchange, she strives to create dynamic open spaces in her projects, inspired by interactive ecological connections between people and nature. She is a co-founder of Schwesterprojekt, a queer collective that creates temporary artistic spaces in Basel. Baumann is a scholarship holder at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and her Queer Nature project was recently selected as part of the open call for the Future Architecture platform.