LIKE LEAVES
20.09.2024 - 27.10.2024

Artists: Priyageetha Dia, Simryn Gill, Nona Inescu, Thuy Tien Nguyen, Elia Nurvista, Iulia Toma, Munem Wasif


Curator: Anca Rujoiu

Opening: Friday, September 20, 19:00

Sharing session of bánh lá*: Saturday, September 21, 16:00

Like Leaves is an inquiry into migration from an ecological perspective. The exhibition carries the title of the eponymous artwork by Simryn Gill. Since 2015, the artist has made this work with hundreds of fallen leaves from Jambu Laut (Syzygium grande) trees from her hometown, Port Dickson in Malaysia. This roadside tree common in parts of South and Southeast Asia has wide leaves that the artist pressed, cut square and left to dry. In this iteration of the artwork, leaves of the plane tree (Platanus) that predominantly marks the streets and parks in Bucharest were picked up, prepared in the same way and pinned to the wall. The trimmed leaves are in the artist’s view, photographs. The passage of light through photosynthesis is directly inscribed into the structure and colour of the leaves. In the exhibition space where the leaves will gradually crumble and fade to shades of green and muted browns, these photographs bear witness to the drifting of matter and the passage of time.

Departing from artworks from South and Southeast Asia, Like Leaves proposes a shift in perspective: an understanding of migration that connects all forms of life. Bringing forward a view on migration from Asia where colonial processes and their contemporary legacies have deeply impacted the movement and displacement of humans and plants alike, the exhibition invites to an exploration of immigration from Asia to Romania within a historical and ecological framework.

Through speculative narratives, Priyageetha Dia addresses the plantation histories of Southeast Asia and their contemporary traces. Working with computer-generated imagery (CGI), Dia has developed a digital vocabulary that traces the links between technology, labour and environmental destruction. Spectre System (2024) marks a new chapter in the artist’s research on plantation colonialism and labour migration on the Malay Peninsula. One of the British Empire’s most profitable colonies and the world’s largest exporter of rubber in the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Malaya relied on the indentured labour of hundreds of thousands of workers. The ghostly protagonist in Dia’s animation reminds us that spirits abound in the landscape of the Anthropocene. A vinyl on the wall depicting elongated hands, mirrors the qualities of rubber in its elasticity and blurs the boundaries between body and space.

Nona Inescu’s sculpture Preservers (Case for nurturing interpersonal relationships) (2024) draws reference to a history of botanical knowledge intertwined with colonial expansion. An understanding of plants was a source of power, as this knowledge translated into control over land of the colonies and transport across the globe of plants for plantation and fruits for consumption. In Inescu’s sculpture, two silhouettes of human bodies welded in steel create the shape of sarcophagi. This sculpture brings to life a drawing by the feminist artist Birgit Jürgenssen dated from 1974. Are the human subjects encased? Or do they create a cage together? The interior of their bodies is hollow and filled with a bunch of dry thistle. The artist associates the sarcophagi with the Wardian case, a sealed glass container promoted by the English Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward at the beginning of 19th century to grow and transport plants and used at the peak of the industrial revolution for the movement of plants worldwide. Conceived as a companion piece to the sculpture, the photograph Inclosure (Cotton thistle) (2024) captures two hands trying to make contact with a thorny thistle. In the context of the artist’s inquiry, the gesture is emblematic of the human’s will to dominate and control nature.

The sculpture by Thuy Tien Nguyen is informed by the artist’s short residency in Bucharest. Made out of solid materials such as aluminium and steel, the sculpture’s minimalist aesthetics evoke a non-place, a space of transition that lacks a distinct identity. The sculpture hints at Red Dragon (Dragonul Roșu), an iconic market in the north-east of Bucharest that alongside the older Europa market is an indicator of the migration from East and Southeast Asia to Romania. Occupying a vast area of more than 60 hectares, the Red Dragon claims to be the largest retail market for Chinese products in Europe. The modernization process of this large retail complex in the past years took a globalising form in terms of homogenous space design and product offer. The artist disrupts this aesthetics of global anonymity with intimate gestures: snapshots from the market imprinted on cardboard, sugar glass casting of malabar spinach and the iconic Northern Vietnamese leaf trầu cau cultivated by Vietnamese communities in Bucharest, and a piece of cloth from the traditional dress Aó dai. These are fragments that carry a sense of home or purpose in the experience of migration. During the exhibition, the flower and leaves on display will be constantly changed by members of the Vietnamese communities in Bucharest through an exchange with Salonul de proiecte.

Elia Nurvista’s mural is part of the artist’s ongoing series Long Hanging Fruits (2020-present). The drawing on the wall is made out of unrefined palm oil mixed with pigments and it is integrated into the architecture of Salonul de proiecte’s space. The drawing illustrates the devastating effects of the cultivation of palm oil in Indonesia at an industrial scale. The oil palm was introduced by the Dutch from Africa as a cash crop. Indonesia became the world’s largest producer of vegetable oil, a mass production that entailed massive deforestation, land conflicts, displacement of people and destruction of entire ecosystems. While exploring this plantation history, the artist also deploys the palm oil into an activator of critical exchange and hospitality through reading groups and gatherings.

When it comes to the experience of migration, Iulia Toma’s artwork old seeds (2024) ponders in an equal manner the limits of visual representation and the failures of political systems. Suspended in space, a blue gate becomes a maker of borders. Despite the softness of the material and colour, the floral motifs stitched on the fabrics, at a closer look, one can observe that the motifs represent constellations of boats and threatening drones that speak to the violence of our times as well to the hostile attitudes towards immigrants. While in the exhibition visitors can move freely through this portal, we are reminded by the artist that so many gates are closed and oppose the movement of those fleeing from their homeland because of war, economic struggles, and climate disasters. A personal text by the artist that is available to the visitors captures the process of making and remaking this work, the ways in which artistic imagination negotiates with the realities on the ground.

In Machine Matter (2017), Wasif Munem immerses the viewer into a close and slow observation of a seemingly abandoned building. This black and white film, defined by slow movements of camera, photographic compositions and industrial soundtrack is a poetic portrait of a closed jute factory in Bangladesh. Cultivated in South Asia for centuries, jute became known as “The Golden Fibre” when the British colonial forces turned it into a cash crop in what is now Bangladesh. After independence, when jute’s economy played an important role in the separation from Pakistan in 1971, the state nationalised all the mills. Under the pressure of the World Bank’s programme, reforms in the 1990s led to the closure of many state-owned jute factories, privatisation of mills and mass lay-off of workers. Juxtaposing close details of human body and factory objects, the artist highlights an affective and material connection between man and machine, between man and an industry to which the national identity of present-day Bangladesh is closely tied.

*The sharing session of bánh lá, a traditional Vietnamese leaf cake, provides the context for an informal discussion about the experience of immigration to Romania.

Throughout the duration of the project a series of collective readings will be organized in partnership with the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration – SNSPA, Quixote's Cove and Satori Center for the Arts (Kathmandu). The sessions will be co-led by Pranab Singh (faculty at the University Department of Art and Design, Kathmandu) and Elia Nurvista (artist).

Image: Simryn Gill, Like Leaves, 2015—ongoing (detail)



Production: Robert Băjenaru

Assistant curator: Ana Maria Ștefan

Special thanks: Megan Dominescu, Larisa Sitar, Andrei Cebotaru, Dinu Bodiciu, Sorina Tomulețiu, Arthi Duraisamy, Maia Pham, Nhung Bui, Le Hong Nhung, Nhat Pham, Zhang Wanwen, Jared Marks, Pranab Singh, Raluca Grosescu, Cătălin Năstăsoiu, Goethe Institut Bucharest, Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery, Vietnam Embassy in Romania, Vietnamese Woman Organization in Romania



This event is organised by the Salonul de proiecte Association as a part of the project of the project Like Plants. An Ecological Perspective on Migration.

Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund

The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.

Partners: National University of Political Studies and Public Administration – SNSPA, Community Organized Relief Effort Association, Satori Center for the Arts (Kathmandu), Solitude Project Cultural Association, Radio România Cultural, Scena9

Sponsor: Corcova Roy & Dâmboviceanu