installation, plantbased, pigments, concept, landart
Description:
This work is built along the linguistic and material stratification of installation – it condenses into a single object both the gesture of human domination and a hidden sensitivity toward nature, which is made visible precisely through the act of destruction. The title cuts meaning apart: “bokorkasza” (“bush-scythe”) – two words that simultaneously evoke archaic agrarian history and technological violence.
The installation’s material is the tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) – a plant stigmatized as “invasive” and allelopathic, forcing its way out of urban cracks and between concrete blocks, taking root even on construction sites, defying all human efforts. The tree fragments were sourced from places where they would have been cut down regardless; thus, the work reinterprets what has been rendered surplus and excluded. The act of painting is itself a rewriting: it employs a plant native to Europe, culturally multilayered in meaning (commonly known as dyer’s elder or black elderberry). This gesture counterbalances the “hostile” status of the tree-of-heaven with the healing and tradition-bound associations of the elder.
Falcastrum can also be understood as a “spatial embroidery”: the inverted tree trunks, driven into the soil, appear like threads weaving a new pattern into the fabric of the landscape. The action may be described as pattern-making: each cut tree becomes a new stitch in space, part of a slow, repetitive, meditative gesture. Here, the metaphor of embroidery refers not only to craft traditions, but to a caring form of rewriting – a transformation of space, thread by thread, motif by motif.
Falcastrum
Anikó Mazán Share on FacebookYear: 2025
Size: 210x170x200 cm
Technique: installation
Price: n.a.
Private
Photographer: Szőke Erika