I keep being drawn to exhibitions involving wild, untamed nature, the nature almost invading spaces, like it cannot be controlled and put in little neat compartments any longer. The space dissapears when confronted with pine trees powerful monumentalism, even if it’s a dead tree that’s been cut down. It motivates to sit with ones thoughts, or to just be in silence, to smell and to witness nature in a foreign setting thus paying extra special attention to details. But the only problem is I can’t hug these trees. The gallery setting takes away the freedom to interact freely with nature. Only the artists, only in a controlled setting, only as part of a performance.
This makes me want to make a version of the same thing but in actual forest. Melt tree resin, pour it over roots, branches and tree mushrooms. Then brake it down and start allover again. Renewal. Another chance. Recycling
My dad bought me a forest. Without asking. He just thought it was a good idea. I feel both honoured and terrified. How would I take care of a forest? Taking care of my own, lonely, depressed father few times a year feels like a lot of responsibility, do I really want a forest on top of that? I worry about his a lot, how he manages alone, what will happen if he falls and nobody’s there to help him? But I also get so annoyed and frustrated as he’s not even 70 yet but mentally acting as if his life was over. I get angry, it’s not ny responsibility to save him, not my fault his life turned out the way it did. Still, the washed out patriarchal side of my brain feels like I “should” be taking care of him, feels guilty if I don’t
Somehow I keep thinking again about the monumentality of the trees and the network they create with their roots and branches, like a community that will outlive us all, which witnesses and remembers everything
“Zywica* Solar Plexus is Jura Shust’s first solo exhibition in Poland. The Belarusian artist, who is based in Berlin, frequently returns to his home region on the Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian border in his work. This area is home to ancient forms of folk knowledge and contains one of Europe’s most remarkable natural landscapes, including primeval forests, the meandering River Viliya and transitional woodlands bordering the taiga.
Drawing on ethnobotanical research, Shust explores the remnants of animism in Eastern European cultures – ancient beliefs, rituals and practices that describe the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world, as preserved in folklore and cultural texts. His transdisciplinary practice, which encompasses installations made from organic and industrial materials as well as films structured around the rhythms of the winter and summer solstices, repeatedly returns to ancient forest and tree symbolism, rites of passage and funerary customs.
At the same time, his collaboration with a group of young migrants on film and performance projects, alongside references to the latest technologies, situates his work at the heart of the most pressing contemporary political and social debates.
Taking a specific geopolitical stance, Shust addresses universal questions: the erosion of connection to the more-than-human world; the transformation of spirituality; and the shifting relationship between species in the face of crises caused by extractive capitalism, militarisation and the destruction of ecosystems.
He also considers how we are to navigate a reality in which artificial intelligence is gradually assuming functions traditionally associated with religion and mythology, such as narrating and making sense of the world. As Al becomes a planetary management system and a collective digital consciousness – fulfilling the desire for interspecies communication – we must begin to ask what our afterlife in the digital cloud will look like.”
