Garden

The basis of „Garden” are the photographs of Mateusz Sarello, created over a three-year period, illustrating a disintegration and emotional destruction. The process of working with the photographs consists in going back in time, taking a stance towards a morbid relationship with a woman. The decaying, drying out flowers are bouquets never offered to her, as well as everything that is impossible to name and express. It is a message for her about “how he is doing”, which can be only conveyed through image. Black and white still lifes are traces of a past relationship which, despite fading, drying out, will never cease to exist and sting with its presence. Marta Zgierska (privately Mateusz Sarello’s partner) is trying to place herself in relation to such potent works. Her actions are an attempt at inscribing herself into his internal landscape, finding her own subjectivity in it. The author is interfering in the images. She replaces flowers with her own body; lips, eyes and ears begin to blossom on the dried out stems. She gives new life to the dead plants though a living, present body. Replacing flowers with her own body, multiplied at numerous instances, is a compulsive attempt of marking her presence, coupled with an undercurrent of fear of experiencing yet another loss. New body-flowers become more integrated with the plant and intertwined with the stems. A meticulous installation stands for the need of becoming finally rooted and remaining in the very landscape, much as it is airless and marked with the past.