Don’t miss the opportunity to visit The Posthumanities Hub-website illustrator Anna Hedberg’s art exhibition “Urban Flora”, in Linköping on the 17-30th of October! Opening, with live drawing, on the 17th at 16.00-19.00 CET.

“URBAN FLORA – I build up plants from rubbish, then I draw the rubbish plant and then I print the drawings in different layers with screen printing.

In the Urban Flora project, I start from things that I find; on the street or in the bus, on the floor or in pockets. Small things that no longer have any function. From these things I build up new unknown “plants”. A broken plastic spoon, a chewing gum, a spit out kernel can become part of a new urban “flora”. I am interested in the discarded, the dirty and making something beautiful out of it. To revalue what once had a function or to make visible traces of more or less desirable activities. By drawing the selected and wasted that seeps out at the bottom of consumer society, I create a new organic vegetation. In this undergrowth, the origin can sometimes be sensed but is not always completely obvious.

I am inspired by Donna Haraway’s thoughts about the tentacular compost, where everything is reused. In her book “Staying with the trouble” she writes about how we are all intertwined, that we humans are fused with nature. There is no boundary between nature and culture.

Urban flora is part of socio-biological diversity. I will develop the project by working site-specifically in Linköping with the participation of others. “Can I have the junk you have in your pocket?” I collect the local trash that happens to be where the artwork will then be produced and placed. In this case in the cultural center Skylten. Otherwise, the works shown at the exhibition are mostly screen-printed images made from drawings of “junk plants”.

”The unfinished Chthulucene must collect up the trash of the Anthropocene, the exterminism of the Capitalocene, and chipping and shredding and layering like a mad gardener, make a much hotter compost pile for still possible pasts, presents, and futures.”*

*Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene av Donna Haraway i e-flux Issue #75. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/“

For more information about the project, check out Anna’s website: https://www.annahedberg.se/start/nyheter-news