LAST YEAR'S HERBARIUM​

​

type artistic research, installation

role researcher, artist and curator

team with Eda Aslan

​

produced as part of The Garden of (not) Forgetting project

​

presented at 

DEPO, İstanbul, 2021

​

2017, after the many attempts to enter the herbarium of Alfred Heilbronn Botanical Garden and several rejections, the idea of creating an alternative herbarium came into life. Like the botanists wandering around the territories to observe the floral existences, we wandered around the Botanical Garden repetitively to explore and document the unique life that evolved in the limited territory of the garden that is under the risk of demolishment. However, as a reaction to the rejections, we had with a highlight of not conducting a "scientific" practice, the herbarium of our practice rejected the rules and formations of the scientific herbarium. The hierarchy inherent to taxonomy and classification is rejected for establishing an alternative herbarium where one can see anonymous pieces from the integrity of Botanical Garden plants about to be forgotten. 
​

The reinterpretation of botanical practice inherent to our practice to maintain the memory of the garden and the plant life established there raised various questions on the colonial roots of botanical practices and nurture a discussion on decolonisation of the practices of collecting, gathering and assembling.

​

Image 1 

image 2

image