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OLGA BALEMA, One reenters the garden by becoming a vegetable
installation view at Kunstverein Nürnberg, 2015

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One reenters the garden by becoming a vegetable is a new solo exhibition by OLGA BALEMA that is currently on view at the Kunstverein Nürnberg in Germany. The show features a series of new works relating to farming, the production system of food and eventually our relation with nature. The title of the exhibition makes reference to the book From Communion to Cannibalism (1990) by MAGGIE KILGOUR in which KILGOUR analyses western cultural history, literature and religion paying special attention to the imagery of Communion and cannibalism.

Bold green feeding troughs recovered with thick layers of paint, vegetables made of latex or salt-pickled cucumber slices glued on metal sheets are one of those works in the exhibition that look familiar and artificial on the same time. Nevertheless the pieces are not presented as a nostalgic backlash against the current agricultural practice itself nor they are imbued with a pseudo moralistic eco conscious discourse but they seem rather to convey a cybernetic ecological perspective, a reading of the ambiguity that comes from a post-human world where everything goes to seed and the vision of a survival, maybe of a sustainable future aligned with stories of life and death, past and present, transience and honesty.

→ One reenters the garden by becoming a vegetable by OLGA BALEMA is on view at Kunstverein Nürnberg (Germany) until November 8, 2015.

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