St. Sebastian
Volt Agapeyev
Feralli project, An Assemblage, 2023
In abandoned places, people are easily replaced. After all, nature abhors a vacuum. The spaces left behind and empty belong solely to the past and to our memories.
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In the present moment, the desolation is being gradually reclaimed by other creatures. And the pioneers of this process are typically plants. They effortlessly take over new territories and create more comfortable conditions for other organisms. Flora actively breaks through debris, turns cultivated areas into thickets, and, by enveloping, expropriates everything that once belonged to humans.
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To many, observing such bio-expansion evokes thoughts of decline and decadence. Yet, a less superficial but more interesting aspect of this process is the incredible vitality of nature.
Thanks to this vitality, it is impossible to recognise the parched bed of a reservoir that has transformed into a grove of white willows. Just as it is impossible to identify the ruins of a destroyed settlement beneath a lush green cover. This rewilding happens swiftly. It conceals but does not fully dissolve the traces of war.
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The events of recent years have changed everyone and everything around us. The environment is no exception and will never be the same. These changes have woven everything into an assemblage in the form of a tree mutilated by warfare. A peculiar monument to the forced symbiosis of life and that which is designed to destroy life. For the plant continues to grow and breathe despite its many broken branches and dangerous fragments lodged within its body. It will have to live with these toxic remnants for many years, if not centuries. Only care for what has survived offers the chance for new growth and a future. And this is a task for everyone, because each person is part of this assemblage.
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