“Tired Palm Trees” Installation view ©Art Sonje CenterArt
Sonje Center presents the exhibition “Tired Palm Trees” through August 4, at
The Ground. ommitted to addressing climate change and the ecological issues,
Art Sonje Center has explored actionable strategies as an art museum to promote
sustainable living. This exhibition is part of the museum’s 2024 program,
designed to uncover new possibilities for addressing the global crisis, guided
by three pivotal themes under three keywords: “Transversality, Time, and
Possibility.”
Despite
its title, “Tired Palm Trees” is not an exhibition about palm trees, but rather
an exhibition that borrows many symbolic images implied by palm trees. It
explores the impact of human desires on climate change and the social phenomena
derived from it, such as habitat encroachment and migration due to political
power structures and the appropriation of nature through artifacts within a
political, social, and/or historical context.
And this
exhibition, palm trees emerge as objects that are not only tired of the
colonialist attitudes and gaze of humans but also the constant
misinterpretation and misuse of their habitats that plants have had to endure
throughout human history. The exhibition also examines the human desire to
enjoy only the aesthetic and psychological benefits of nature by artificially
recreating natural elements in manmade environments.
What all
the contributions to “Tired Palm Trees” have in common is that their plants are
suffering and tired. Symptomatic of the tiredness of a society that cannot find
rest even in the soundest sleep, this exhibition aims to form an empathetic
view of climate change and the environment by anthropomorphizing them as
symbolic trespassers of borders and migratory subjects through the works of
eight artists (Regula Dettwiler, Jongwan Jang, Seif Kousmate, Edith Payer,
Víctor Cruz & Hugo Portillo, Mi Jung Shin, Katrin Ströbel, Roswitha
Weingrill) who address some of the many social phenomena surrounding plants.
