Aliens: Colonial Narratives Through Plant Migration
Artists: Adam Vackar, Supermrin
Curator: Isabella Indolfi
Exhibition Dates: June 1 – 23, 2024

Aliens examines how plants become entangled in human narratives of migration, domination, and control. Eradicated, discriminated against, declared illegal or invasive, plants, like humans, are often subjected to systems shaped by colonial histories and capitalist land management. The exhibition brings together works by Adam Vackar and Supermrin, two artists who approach plants as both subject and material, exploring how ideas of invasion and belonging circulate between ecological and political systems. Juxtaposing the history of the invasive Giant Hogweed in Eastern Europe with the ideology of the American manicured lawn, the exhibition reveals how concepts of “nature” are deeply shaped by cultural and colonial narratives. Aliens proposes a shift in perspective: plants are not passive elements of landscape but active participants in ecological, political, and cultural processes shaping the environments we inhabit.

Czech artist Adam Vackar presents documentary film, photography, and sculptural installations examining the controversial Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), a plant originally introduced from the Caucasus to Europe as an ornamental curiosity before becoming classified as an invasive threat. Tracing the plant’s migration from Central Asia to Europe and the Americas, Vackar investigates how political campaigns aimed at its eradication mirror broader rhetorics of invasion, illegality, and exclusion applied to humans and other living beings perceived as foreign within a given system.

US-based Indian artist Supermrin (Mrinalini Aggarwal) presents FIELD, a bio-art project operating between sculpture, performance, and bioethics. Working with waste lawn clippings, which she boils, washes, and processes into a translucent biodegradable bio-plastic resembling vegan leather, Supermrin transforms the material residue of urban landscaping into fragile sculptural forms. Her works evoke temporality, decay, and grotesque subjectivity, imagining a plant-centered perspective on a possible rewilded future.