Bamboo 33447 (1535 leaves), 2018
Photo: Angels Barcelona
Collection
Encaustic, pigments, pencil and fragments from a technical drawing manual on paper
205 x 146 cm
Ania Soliman's research-based body of work constantly questions the basis for different kinds of representation. She looks at notions of artificiality and nature as well as our perceptions of the digital and the material.
Bamboo 33447 (1535 leaves) belongs to a series of drawings of artificial bamboo plants, as well as a rainforest landscape rendered in yellow. Designed by humans, assigned a serial number, and mass-produced in plastic or cloth, the artificial bamboo plants represent the kind of irrational and manic overproduction that threatens our continued existence on this planet. Yet the plants also represent a kind of hope: they illustrate how we love and desire nature even in its most alienated manifestations. Nowadays, with the omnipresence of computers, the machine metaphor of nature has become a common denominator in contemporary society. When we see nature as a machine, we impose no ethical limitations on human action and, therefore, we destroy the very systems we depend upon for survival. Interestingly enough if we look closely and analyze the marketing discourse that a world-known design and furniture multinational group uses to sell artificial plants: “Our lifelike artificial flowers and plants don't smell like the real thing, but they'll give your home a real boost. They never wilt and look fresh year after year. And (…) you can change them up with the seasons (…) anytime you want,” we can easily imagine a society that, rather than changing its habits based on evidence of climate change, would rather “design” a new planet to fit its needs.
Soliman’s experiment reminds us of this desire to transform nature, whilst admiring it, of wanting to adapt it to our needs without having to worry about the consequences of our current ego-driven consumer culture that feeds itself on nature’s exploitation in order to maintain the status-quo of over-production. She suggests this is a false dichotomy and our production begins and ends with nature, whose agency we have to adapt to or become one of its failed experiments. As research in Japan and elsewhere has demonstrated, bamboo plants can absorb as much as 12 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year, giving them a potentially crucial role in stabilizing our planet's atmosphere. Perhaps their mass production could be an interesting experiment to imagine for our near future.
– Nature is an experiment, Angels Barcelona, 2019
205 x 146 cm
Ania Soliman's research-based body of work constantly questions the basis for different kinds of representation. She looks at notions of artificiality and nature as well as our perceptions of the digital and the material.
Bamboo 33447 (1535 leaves) belongs to a series of drawings of artificial bamboo plants, as well as a rainforest landscape rendered in yellow. Designed by humans, assigned a serial number, and mass-produced in plastic or cloth, the artificial bamboo plants represent the kind of irrational and manic overproduction that threatens our continued existence on this planet. Yet the plants also represent a kind of hope: they illustrate how we love and desire nature even in its most alienated manifestations. Nowadays, with the omnipresence of computers, the machine metaphor of nature has become a common denominator in contemporary society. When we see nature as a machine, we impose no ethical limitations on human action and, therefore, we destroy the very systems we depend upon for survival. Interestingly enough if we look closely and analyze the marketing discourse that a world-known design and furniture multinational group uses to sell artificial plants: “Our lifelike artificial flowers and plants don't smell like the real thing, but they'll give your home a real boost. They never wilt and look fresh year after year. And (…) you can change them up with the seasons (…) anytime you want,” we can easily imagine a society that, rather than changing its habits based on evidence of climate change, would rather “design” a new planet to fit its needs.
Soliman’s experiment reminds us of this desire to transform nature, whilst admiring it, of wanting to adapt it to our needs without having to worry about the consequences of our current ego-driven consumer culture that feeds itself on nature’s exploitation in order to maintain the status-quo of over-production. She suggests this is a false dichotomy and our production begins and ends with nature, whose agency we have to adapt to or become one of its failed experiments. As research in Japan and elsewhere has demonstrated, bamboo plants can absorb as much as 12 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year, giving them a potentially crucial role in stabilizing our planet's atmosphere. Perhaps their mass production could be an interesting experiment to imagine for our near future.
– Nature is an experiment, Angels Barcelona, 2019
Ania Soliman is an Egyptian/Polish/American artist who grew up in Baghdad and is currently based in Paris.
Her research-based practice focuses on relationships, both real and imaginary, between nature and technology. Anchored in line drawing and using processes of mapping, tracing, coloring, lettering, effacing, and embellishing, she transforms source materials into layered works that often represent conflicting ideas working themselves out.
Her visually diverse but conceptually related bodies of work respond to the experience of living in digital space—mapping its discontinuities, subliminal networks, cultural mashups, and viral repetitions.
Her research-based practice focuses on relationships, both real and imaginary, between nature and technology. Anchored in line drawing and using processes of mapping, tracing, coloring, lettering, effacing, and embellishing, she transforms source materials into layered works that often represent conflicting ideas working themselves out.
Her visually diverse but conceptually related bodies of work respond to the experience of living in digital space—mapping its discontinuities, subliminal networks, cultural mashups, and viral repetitions.