PORTRAITS OF ROOMMATES

About the Work

These works operate through a deliberate shift in visual hierarchy. By redirecting attention from what is visible above ground to what functions below it, the root becomes the central image carrier. It is not presented as a botanical detail, but as a functional site of perception, storage, and decision-making processes. What is usually withdrawn from view becomes the primary form.

The plants are not treated as neutral objects, but as co-inhabitants of a space shared over an extended period of time. The artistic practice is grounded in coexistence rather than observation. As a result, the work aligns itself less with representation than with relation. The root functions as an interface between organism and environment, as an active, responsive system engaged in continuous negotiation with external conditions.

By replacing the traditional portrait head with the root system, the work fundamentally repositions the concept of identity. Identity no longer appears as a stable surface, but as a relational process. What operates underground becomes the face; the invisible becomes the structure through which presence is articulated. In this context, the root can be read as a decentralized thinking organ — a neural network without a center, whose intelligence emerges from connection, adaptation, and duration.

The use of historical photographic portrait frames intensifies this shift. As culturally coded devices for the representation of human individuality, they now frame non-human, subterranean forms of life. This redistribution of visibility reconfigures questions of dignity, subjecthood, and archival value. The frames function not as nostalgic references, but as institutional markers that alter the status of what is seen.

Without narrative dramatization or moral assertion, the works engage forms of agency beyond the human. The plants do not operate as metaphors, but as actors within complex ecological assemblages. Their root systems function as archives of time and experience; their branching structures as adaptive responses to conditions they do not control, yet actively negotiate.

The series redefines the portrait not as the depiction of an autonomous individual, but as the visualization of a relational state. Its critical precision lies in this displacement. The work invites a reconsideration of perception, intelligence, and responsibility beyond anthropocentric models, proposing representation as a question of relation rather than dominance.

Exhibitions

2025 NATURAL EMPOWERMENT,
Magdalenenkapelle, Burgdorf, GER