2730 May 2021
2730 May 2021

Outdoor installation

To cultivate a future

Fyre syster

Plantroposcen + Design = To cultivate a future

The process-based work "Fyra systrar för Plantroposcen" (Four sisters for Plantroposcen) has been built on Malmö Art Museum's courtyard in collaboration with the art and research collective (P)Art of the Biomass. It acts as a hub and a stage, a plantroposcen, of co-planted plants.

The co-planning is based on a cultivation technique developed by the Native Americans that consists of the crops corn, bean and squash. They are called three sisters. Together they help each other grow better. But there is also a fourth sister mentioned in this work – the human – who needs to take care of the earth and the plants. The four sisters together form a synergy where the human is not above nature but with it.

Here we try to investigate and imagine how the relationship between humans, plants and the earth's bustling life could be different. What can we learn from the plants that give us the air we breathe and the food we eat?

During Southern Sweden Design Days, Malmö Art Museum wants to show with this work how artists and designers can contribute to projects for sustainable development in urban planning and the designed living environment. This can be part of the solution to the great challenge of our time to create sustainable societies together, partly in new construction and partly in how we develop existing areas.

What does a future vision of the city look like? How will we take care of our green surfaces and how can these be used in a sustainable and inclusive way that is in harmony with the plants, our environment and, by extension, our continued existence?

(P)Art of the Biomass is an art and research collective that in interdisciplinary processes examines and renegotiates the human relationship to the rest of the biomass. Their work emerges as social sculptures where they want to try new ways of learning, listening and weaving stories about complex relationships in what has come to be known as the Anthropocene, the age of man.

(P)Art of the Biomass

Malin Lobell is an artist and gardener who has worked for several years under the theme "What and who can fit in a citizen garden?" about the political role of plants, food production, human and more-than-human relations. She is educated at the Valand Academy of the Arts.

Janna Holmstedt is an artist and researcher with a special interest in listening and situated practitioners. She defended her dissertation in 2017 with an artistic dissertation at Umeå Academy of the Arts and Lund University and is active in the international research group The Posthumanities Hub.

For more information about the art and culture project at Malmö Art Museum: https://bit.ly/Plantroposcen

 

Participants