The Barren Garden is a vision. With these words ME(A)LS opens the manifesto of its latest project, a “sterile garden”
where a surrealistic and oneiric white vegetation grows turning the exhibition space into an urban greenhouse in the
heart of town.
The artists have technologically planted a barren garden where, among a series of Petri dishes used in medical and
biological labs for bacterial cultures, eight pistils of different floral species are replicated, blown out of proportion as if
they were affected by an anomalous growth. Using scientific research methodology, ME(A)LS sampled bacteria and
other microorganisms from their skin right after the act of self-pleasuring and put them into Petri capsules where
microorganisms can continue living and reproducing. Thus, the phenomenon of sexed reproduction is explored both
from a human and plant perspective, and it is especially evoked by the giant pistils: the sexual organ is the only part we
can see of the selected flowers, the only one they expose while waiting for an impossible pollination. Through the world
of botany and its language the artists ponder over those relational dynamics influenced by desire, automatisms and
standards which mark the rhythm of a mechanical and mechanized living, such as contemporary living can be.
Hollow pistils, ovaries without ovules, no placenta at all: starting from this striking anatomical similarity, ME(A)LS
suggests a grotesque symbiosis between human and plant at their late co-evolutionary stage in a dystopic and hyper-
technological environment. The concept of Natura naturans is transformed into Natura replicans, referring to the self-
generating mechanisms of nature which can be now replaced by an automatic reproduction of nature itself. Into the
sensual and ambiguous atmosphere of this garden filled with phytomorphic organs and microorganism survived after
masturbation, the two artists explore relationships which never took place, and they bring sex, perceptions and
environmental stimuli back to a purely biological daily dimension - the prehistory of human being, the primordial and
eternal pattern of reproduction.
The Barren Garden is an environment, a vessel, an observatory, and most of all it is a dystopian and poetic device for
the conservation of love and crystallization of life: without any additional chance of mutual exchange and fertilization,
the installation is conceived as a flowering show in a microbiologically controlled cleanroom, designed to preclude
potential entry of other organisms. This leads to unusual and different ways of enjoying the works and entering the
exhibition space where visitors are called to protect the fragility and infertility of the plant species from their own human
presence. Erotic and bacterial components meet each other in the barren garden, without touching.
Ilaria Monti
Site specific installation exhibited in Spazio DISPLAY
Parma (PR)
during the personal exhibition "Barren Garden"
curated by Ilaria Monti