Léa Bismuth
Author, art critic, and curator / 2021
Creating Openings Aurélie Slonina
Though our experience of art forms cannot be dissociated from our perception of time, certain serendipitous encounters may in fact enable us to approach speci"c works with greater acuity. Haven’t we all seen, in recent months 1, those plant forms, commonly said to be weedy and invasive, that have cropped up in the interstices of our city sidewalks, roads, and walls? Hardy, robust species, but green even so, with leaves often spikey and corrugated, and stems long and proud? Haven’t we all posted cellphone pictures on social media of baby birds on a windowsill, of the "rst $owers of spring, or of subversive plants that, for want of a proper $ower box, have prevailed over the tenets of domestication? A similar shift occurs in Replicant (2017), an irreverent and whimsical play on norms subverting the codes of language, when the plants of a formal $ower bed after a design from the gardens of Versailles – heir to the landscape classicism of André Le Nôtre – are replaced by dandelions, thistle, and stinging nettles.
There’s no such thing as weeds
But what does the term “weed” actually mean? After a quick search on Internet, I "nd out we often use it mistakenly: a weed in one context is not necessarily a weed in another. Let’s just say that, as it is with many things, it’s all a matter of how you look at it. Take, for example, the dandelion, an edible plant that attracts pollinators, and that is therefore bene"- cial in terms of biodiversity. 2 So, why do we need words like “weeds” in the "rst place – those literal “bad plants” in French (mauvaises herbes) – and what exactly is it we are trying to weed out? For language is a sneaky thing, and it is expressions like these that have pigeonholed for good certain plant forms – and given us leave to use “weedkiller” with a clear conscious. For ultimately, it is the invasive and expansionist nature of these archaic plants that we dread. Gardeners in favor of mastering and control were no doubt terri"ed from the outset by these irrepressible and proli"c species.3 This point, in particular, reveals the aspect of social commitment inherent to all of Aurélie Slonina’s work, the notion of “weed” here taking on sociological resonance by its con$ation with what our conformity-happy society calls “undesirables” : those populations either banished to the suburbs (the term banlieue in French derives from ban, the royal prerogative to rule and command), or expelled beyond our national borders.
Early on – starting with the Age of Reason, as Foucault tells us – madness too was banished, locked up in asylums designed for that purpose. So, it is reasonable to guess that the French idiom for weed, herbe folle, literally “crazy grass,” or wild grass, dates from that same period. According to the dictionary, its propensity to “grow anywhere,” “haphazardly” and without the “control of man” earned it the quali"cation. But imagine the contrary, grass that doesn’t run wild, that could be termed “normal,” that grows only on command. What a bore! Other works by Aurélie Slonina explore similar questions. Take, for example, Fluorescence (2017), a series of stencils of imaginary, $uorescent green weeds painted on city walls, in a nod to the spontaneous nature of street art. Likewise, in her transient installation, Friche à la française (2009-2102), the plans of the French landscape architect André Le Nôtre, with their perfect curvilinear lines and scrolls, become a playground for the propagation of “rampant” plant species. The work of the French garden designer Gilles Clément comes to mind, with his concept of the “garden in movement” (le jardin en movement), an ecosystem inspired by vacant lots, where “all plant species can develop freely.” 4 Consequently, it is a question of “conserving the species that have adapted to an environment,” of cooperating with them according to the unique capacity of each to propagate at will. Clément also developed the theory of the “planetary garden,” a life-a&rming call for ecological diversity exploring the political stakes of the garden as a “place of possible invention.” 5 Slonina’s work could therefore be seen as a transposition of what Clément calls the “third-landscape” into urban environments. In one of her recent experiments, notably in the context of her installation Guests, she worked with tarpaulin, the material used by migrants to build makeshift shelters. But “environmental questions aside, the notion of ‘undesirable’ is also a possible metaphor for a social reality,” the artist explains.
Drifting Meteors against an SF backdrop
Slonina’s work also ventures into territories of critical and cosmic conjecture. From the concrete planters of our city sidewalks to SF fantasies of meteors falling from the sky, she took the plunge with her exhibition, Drifting Meteors (2020), at the Maréchalerie Contemporary Art Center in Versailles. In a space immersed in darkness, the spectator discovers an immersive installation of dimly lit blocks of faceted, grey cement hovering miraculously in the air. The “diamond” design of the sculptural objects was inspired by the cement planters characteristic of 1960s urban planning. But nothing is growing in this case, excepting perhaps the visions of future worlds cropping up in our minds. These “unidenti"ed $ying objects crashed to Earth,” the artist tells us. And our perception is abruptly plunged into a disturbing but plausible parallel reality. Next we notice a life form, or what might be called a “human witness:” the small "gure, about the size of a "ve-year-old child, is perfectly still; his name is Hors-Sol (without land), after the French term for hydroponic growing methods; he is wearing the typical getup of a contemporary city dweller – hoodie, jeans, and sneakers – but he doesn’t appear to see us. His face is hidden, in fact, by a virtual reality headset, which naturally leads us to wonder whether the scene isn’t a mere "gment of his imagination. Could the "gure be some diminutive demiurge of legend, could we be guests lost in a virtual landscape of his making? Hors-Sol is fashioned out of ceramic, he is green like chlorophyl-laden leaves, and he is elsewhere – caught between di%erent realities and times.
A confusion hovers over all these disparate forms, which are neither entirely natural nor completely arti"cial. The artist speaks readily about vistas, about what she calls “creating openings,” in reference to her video Openings (2020), a dizzying montage alternating photographs taken between the outskirts of Paris and a Californian desert. It is interesting to note that the term “vista” also signi"es a distant view or prospect seen through an opening. In other words, the eye takes in a vista, or perceives an opening, the way the beholder – whether plant or animal – takes in air. So, let’s take a gamble on a great gulp of air, to catch our breath at last in this world in need of desperate repair.
Frédéric Keck
Research director at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale
CNRS - Collège de France - EHESS / 2022
That Which Filters Through: Nature, Invasive Species, and Modernity in the Art of Aurélie Slonina
Why is it that we are seized with a sense of vertigo when we look at Drifting Meteors? Why are our certainties shaken? Upon entering the Maréchalerie Contemporary Art Center, we discover a series of concrete blocks, some hovering miraculously in the air, others thrust solidly into the ground, as if by arbitrary design. A small, green ceramic "gure catches our eye. We place ourselves in the "gure’s line of vision and what had looked like an alien invasion turns into a series of empty planters attesting to an obliterated landscape. In the eye of the green "gure, who resembles both an invader and a gardener, these ruins from a bygone world seem to take on new life – but doesn’t it always take the gaze of a stranger to organize the set of appearances that we call “nature?” In the adjoining room, we can watch a "lm, projected no doubt via the "gure’s virtual reality headset. More planters, but this time "lled with urban greenery, make way for formal gardens, and then tra&c circles planted with colorful $owers, and the cacti and palms of a Californian desert. The camera moves around a tree and then cuts to a point-of-view shot of the landscape, captured as it were from the vegetation’s perspective. It is this ever-shifting play on perspective that has thrown o% our sense of balance. Are we looking at the surroundings from a mountainside, or from the branch of a tree? Are we immersed in the reality of a world in ruins, or in the gardener’s vision of a possible world to come?
Lessons from contemporary anthropology, in response to ecological disasters, have shaken established categories of scienti"c thought.1 Human reason, since the Enlightenment in the 18th century, has imposed a set form on the phenomenal world – to the point of engul"ng it in pure abstractions, as the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant teaches us.2 The anthropological divide separating nature and culture, and around which societal classi"cations are organized, emerged from this original separation of subject from object, with the demarcation in every human community that distinguishes urban and natural attributes adding to the gap. Today, the organizational proclivities at the heart of critical modernity and Kantian aesthetics are being called into question by the unprecedented proliferation of invasive species in the context of climate change. However, since the possibility itself of producing a work, or of making di%erences visible, appears to be tied to the guiding principle of subjectivity as an organizing force, the question is – how are we to understand nature today, with the modern organization of the natural world being challenged by invasive species? This could be the question central to all of Aurélie Slonina’s work.
By exploring issues of invasive plants, her artwork reformulates the critical question that ushered in modernity: how far back do we need to stand to be able to perceive reality? In the context of globalization, “good plants” become “bad,” i.e. weeds – what the French call mauvaises herbes – when they cross into non-native ecosystems. But botany doesn’t make distinctions between “good” and “bad.” The arrival of a species in an ecosystem is merely an opportunity for further symbioses.3 Slonina uses the word “in"ltrator” to describe such organisms, an allusion to the "lters, fences, and borders that need to be negotiated to successfully adapt to a new environment. But though invasive species are subject to mandatory processes of "ltration prior to being accepted, "lters – when seen from the perspective of those who pass through them and not from the viewpoint of those who produce them – can be made into works of art.
In Friches à la française, dandelions, brambles, and nettle have been planted after the formal garden plans of the French landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, revealing their natural inclination to gradually and quietly transgress the imposed con"gurations of the French formal garden. In Treillis, a latticework is shaped into what appears to be an electromagnetic "eld with multiple focal points, suggesting that the classic garden framework of mandatory perspectives would be unable to withstand the presence of unwanted creepers. As for the blue tarpaulins of Guests, which have sprung up in the courtyard of a building in Paris, they remind us of those other tarps, planted by migrants, that have sprung up in the parks and suburbs of cities across Europe. And then there is “Line up,” subjecting us to what Temple Grandin imagines the animal sees and feels as it enters the slaughterhouse;4 in this case, however, the experience is that of the plants being mowed down by a tractor – and that reconstitute, willy-nilly, a modernday garden à la française.
And so, Aurélie Slonina, like the street artist Invader, confronts the limits of imposed urban frameworks by introducing visual elements relegated to the sidelines – garden weeds, in her case, a computer game character, in his. But the two have distinctly di%erent virological imaginaries. In Invader’s case, the virus causes the host cell to explode, the simplicity of its biological information setting o% replication processes just as the easily-duplicable and transient nature of the works of street art throws the art market out of whack.5 In Slonina’s case, the virus is a guest that adheres to the surface and allows novel entities to emerge, in an approach more in keeping with that of land art. The toadstools sprouting straight out of disco balls or plastic patio chairs, like the ones that grow on forest trees, could be called viruses, for example, but parasite perhaps is a better word, since the mushrooms form a symbiotic relationship with the host organism and contribute, consequently, to the accommodation of new forms of life.
Thus, the work of Aurélie Slonina puts to test the "lters we deliberately produce by looking at what is real from the perspective of the so-called in"ltrators. With her narratives of plant species that "lter through the limits of what is acceptable, she questions the relativity of the assessment mechanisms we put into place, such as the di%erent biosecurity measures adopted in Paris, Berlin, or Los Angeles for the regulation of plant life in artworks. All of her works can therefore be seen as experiments in “that which "lters through” in a speci"c environment, the artist’s play on the appearances of what we think of as “nature” giving her work its particular critical resonance.
Sophie Peyrard to GREENKISS
www.greenkiss.fr / 2013
Your latest exhibition at the Galerie Jeune Création (Young Creators Gallery), was entitled Vegetal Invaders #1. A plant invasion ?
One of my works was a series of stickers that could be placed anywhere, like street art. They were giant, urban window boxes. Those were more concrete than plant life, and this time they look more like flying saucers floating in space, come to invade us. Like a modified type of nature, the type we grow in green houses, the type we use fertilizers on. In my work, nature has two forms: the ‘modified’ one, and the wild one, the unwanted plants…
It reminds me of your other creation, Wild/Crash/Push, those graffiti shaped geranium flower boxes…
Yes, another example of ‘modified’ nature, like those flowers one puts on the window sill and on balconies, that you can buy at Truffaut or Jardiland, all that nature-in-a-box on one side, and on the other, graffiti that grows like weeds, which we strive to get rid of, and that keep coming back. These special window boxes were born from the clash of these two worlds, hybrid objects sprung from two opposite ideas. Clean meets trash, order meets chaos.
You also have a creation called Mauvaises Herbes (Weeds), can you tell us a little about it ?
I drew up plans for a French garden, like the ones created by Le Notre in the XVIIth Century, but distorted. Those gardens are very controlled, rigorously drawn by man. But instead of planting rose bushes and box trees, I put nettles, brambles, and other weeds that I had collected in urban settings. I was fascinated by the improbable mix that sprung from this association. The absurdity of it all illustrates mankind’s excessive control over nature that ends up getting out of hand, slipping into chaos… all the way down to GM foods and plants. I wanted to show that too much control over nature leads to abnormality.
I am also a great fan of a piece you made called « Fraicheur Marine » (Sea Breeze), which was very funny and offbeat. Can you tell us about it ?
All of the time, I get an idea because I have to work off the cuff. I was invited to the Anglet’s art festival, which was on the sea front. I was working at the time on the relationship between nature and artificiality, so I automatically came up with this idea : a sea-shore air-freshener ! On my arrival, the smell of salt water was so strong… Once it had been build, it almost felt like the smell came from the art instead of the sea ! It is completely artificial but fits beautifully in the background because it is almost the same colour as the sky, so much so that it sometimes is hard to see. It also looks like a surf board or a boat’s keel… It was like an artificial lung which was managing to integrate perfectly into a natural landscape.
What does working on ‘modified’ nature tell us about yourself ?
I grew up in a privileged neighbourhood where nature was very controlled. There were little streams, artificial lakes and bridges, very 1900’s. That is what I grew up with, what made me who I am. This artificiality, like a giant Smurf village, is also something I can’t stand. I needed to breath, I went out looking for urban waste lands.
Do you believe that artists are meant to influence our vision of nature and the environment ?
I am very aware of environmental issues, and I think we should take a stand. But I don’t think my line of work is about preaching, saying « we have to eat organic food ! We have to take care of our planet ! » That is not what I am trying to convey. I do not think it is my place to do so. An artist has to create wonder, surprise and questions. Sometimes it is through surprise that thought occurs.
Can you tell us a secret ?
My wildest dream would be to visit another planet.
Vincent Pécoil
triple V gallery / 2010
Aurélie Slonina creates an art «after nature», but the nature in question here has nothing to do with the pastoral visions of yesteryear. This nature has not only been domesticated, but synthesised, and adapted to the urban word - a nature that has become «green spaces», a purely negative definition of what nature is (in other words, everything which in the city is neither tar nor concrete). This negative space may be the result of urban planning, as in couvre-feu, or a «wild» (read:individual) intervention, as in Wild, where the flowery decoration (of balconies) is utilised as some sort of graffiti or tag, applied flower pot-wise. Both are actually a sort of signature or expression of self, a way of signalling one’s own presence in the urban space, of individualising a part of the territory. A different Wilde (first name Oscar) thought that it was nature that imitated art. That it was the London fog which imitated the painting of Turner or Monet, and not the other way around. Our present-day nature is no longer the same as the one in London in the 19th century, it imitates abstract painting (the colza fields make great Peter Halleys), but also Dada and New Realism; it has also turned to recycling everything within its reach. What is deemed natural today, is above all the whole concern regarding base materials. By recycling forms and objects, the-visionary- art of the 20th century has played its pioneering role in what has become an economic and ecological imperative (recycling), and we can discern in Aurélie Slonina’s work, which is an image of art as much as of the nature it imitates, an attempt at looping the loop. The function of fertilizers, air fresheners, and artifcial colouring is to make actual nature closer to ideal nature. Thus artifice applied to nature fits into a kind of classicism. By suggesting it is sending out the scent of the sea, Fraîcheur Marine [Sea Freshness] (a sculpture in the shape of a giant room fragrance device set on the coast line) casts doubton the true origin of “scent” (which is to the sense of smell what 'green space' is to nature). It is therefore coherent that Aurélie Slonina should explore other forms of classicism, such as formal French gardens, or their distant heirs, such as the succession of central reservations and roundabouts in Couvrefeu [Curfew], whose sequence conjures up a Morse sentence. From the underlying ideal of classicism also sprung the objective to bring nature under control, which is still guiding our civilization. In Aurélie Slonina's work, the formal French garden, an expression of the Cartesian will to become “masters and owners of Nature”, meets with the universal childlike pleasure of controlling miniature worlds. Both these ambitions are fairly mischievously called upon to cancel each other.