Like Leaves is an inquiry into migration from an ecological perspective. The exhibition carries the title of the eponymous artwork by Simryn Gill.
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Departing from artworks from South and Southeast Asia, Like Leaves proposes a shift in perspective: an understanding of migration that connects all forms of life. Bringing forward a view on migration from Asia where colonial processes and their contemporary legacies have deeply impacted the movement and displacement of humans and plants alike, the exhibition invites to an exploration of immigration from Asia to Romania within a historical and ecological framework.
Through speculative narratives, Priyageetha Dia addresses the plantation histories of Southeast Asia and their contemporary traces. Working with computer-generated imagery (CGI), Dia has developed a digital vocabulary that traces the links between technology, labour and environmental destruction. Spectre System (2024) marks a new chapter in the artist’s research on plantation colonialism and labour migration on the Malay Peninsula. One of the British Empire’s most profitable colonies and the world’s largest exporter of rubber in the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Malaya relied on the indentured labour of hundreds of thousands of workers. The ghostly protagonist in Dia’s animation reminds us that spirits abound in the landscape of the Anthropocene. A vinyl on the wall depicting elongated hands, mirrors the qualities of rubber in its elasticity and blurs the boundaries between body and space.
This event is organised by the Salonul de proiecte Association as a part of the project of the project Like Plants. An Ecological Perspective on Migration.
Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund
Artists: Priyageetha Dia, Simryn Gill, Nona Inescu, Thuy Tien Nguyen, Elia Nurvista, Iulia Toma, Munem Wasif
Curator: Anca Rujoiu
Venue: Salonul de proiecte
Clădirea Universul, Etajul 1, Strada Ion Brezoianu 23-25, București 050023, Romania
