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


This exhibition traces the movement of Giant Hogweed across geographies, histories, and systems of control. Originally introduced to Europe in the 19th century as an ornamental curiosity through colonial botanical networks, the plant gradually shifted from object of admiration to target of eradication. Today, it occupies marginal zones: edges of highways, industrial sites, abandoned land, spaces shaped less by intention than by neglect. The work follows these trajectories through film, photography, and sculptural installations, approaching the plant as a carrier of layered political and historical narratives. Campaigns for its removal reveal how categories such as “invasive,” “illegal,” or “undesirable” are constructed and enforced across both ecological and social domains.

Alongside this, a series of objects operates as a kind of field diary. Records of searching for and encountering the plant. Materials found in the forest and its surroundings are transformed through electrolysis, gradually covered with a thick layer of copper. Their status shifts from marginal organic residue to sculptural form: stabilized, recontextualized, carrying meaning, with an extended temporal horizon of decay. The exhibition unfolds more as a set of conditions than a fixed narrative. Where plants are not passive elements of landscape, a mere backdrop to human history, but active participants in shaping the environments, conflicts, and imaginaries we inhabit.