Talks, discussion and screening with Fanny Brandauer, Rob Crosse, Bethan Hughes and Shirin Sabahi

Plants are exhibited, put on display, whether in botanical gardens, living rooms or art exhibitions. Plants are revealed as living beings that are barely noticed behind their decorative quality or their casualness on the roadside. And plants represent, refer to more than themselves: to ideas of “nature” and “environment”, but also to other-than-human forms of relationships and interdependencies. “Showing plants” can have all these meanings in art contexts. Towards the conclusion of the exhibition “Orangery of Care”, the artists Rob Crosse, Bethan Hughes and Shirin Sabahi and the landscape architect and educator Fanny Brandauer reflect on the role of plants in their work in conversation with Lina Brion from the artist group PARA.

Fanny Brandauer examines how landscape is transferred to and exhibited in interior spaces. Video works by Rob Crosse and Shirin Sabahi show the tensions between protection and control, violence and care in the architectures and structures of keeping plants. Bethan Hughes’ works on rubber plants reveal entanglements of nature, technology and economy and make human-plant relationships visible even where we do not expect them. Their various approaches are also reflected in the context of the PARA Orangery: an installation of collected, discarded potted plants, which tells of offices and living rooms and which is not aimed at conservation but propagation and redistribution.

Fanny Brandauer is a Berlin based landscape architect, curator and educator. Her work is characterized by its transdisciplinarity, exploring the intersection of landscape architecture, arts and curatorial practice. She investigates how landscape can be displayed and communicated in art and cultural contexts. In 2024 she was Artist in Residence at JUNGE AKADEMIE Akademie der Künste Berlin, at Kulturhauptstadt Salzkammergut (AT) and at in:dépendance eth furka zone (CH) and founded the artistic-landscape architectural format Salon Landschaft. In 2021 she created the digital catalog Atlas of Landscapes in a Room. Currently, Fanny is working as production manager at Baumschule Kulturforum Berlin and holds a guest professorship at Universität Kassel.

Visual artist and filmmaker Rob Crosse was a participant in the Berlin Program for Artists 2019–2020 and was awarded the Ars Viva-Preis in 2020. Recent exhibitions include Chaleur Humaine, Triennial Art + Industry, Dunkirk, Plant Fever, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dresden and Ars Viva 2020, Kunstverein Hannover. His video works were shown at Room in a Crowd, ICA, London Film Festival and Last Remnants of Nature, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Bethan Hughes’ audiovisual installations, sculptures, and texts examine the un-natural ecologies created by industry, commerce, and technology. Her most recent project in a series about natural rubber, Hevea Act 6: An Elastic Continuum, was shown at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón (SP) and gnration, Braga (PT), and will be part of her solo show at Kunstpavillon Innsbruck in fall 2024. She is currently working on her first monograph (forthcoming in early 2025).

Shirin Sabahi’s works deal with built space, tracing the production, contextualization, and interpretation of artefacts and places over the course of time. In her work, art and architectural legacies appear as stand-ins for larger historical, economic, and urban developments. Her installations combine appropriated and newly produced photographic, filmic, sculptural, and spatial materials. She lives in Berlin.

The exhibition remains open until 6.30 pm on November 16.