Working closely with collaborators from different disciplines and with the particularities of sites, Caitlin Franzmann creates participatory works which take shape around slow practices, conversation, critical listening, and collective forms of care. Co-commissioned with Tarrawarra Biennial, to the curve of you is a series of sonic and relational artworks focused on the movement and connections of plants, people and microbes. The project experiments with gardening, foraging, fermenting, and flower essences as embodied processes that can both celebrate and disrupt values, histories, and feelings related to the cultivation and care of land.
The IMA iteration of the project is unique to the urban context of the gallery and to plants that are ‘wild’ and medicinal within the city environment. A selection of displaced plants that survive on disturbed and untended land will co-mingle with existing plants in the IMA garden. The garden will act as a space for public events that will seek to enliven the senses and encourage conversations on systems of classification, ethics of care, and the impacts of colonialism on traditional ecological knowledge. In the gallery, the sounding of seeds and vibrations of a flower essence will offer an encounter with Achira—a plant originating from Peru that has been called by many other names across continents. Defying classification, Achira is to be noticed and respected.
Caitlin Franzmann has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria, New Museum in New York, and Kyoto Art Centre. She was a member of the feminist art collective LEVEL from 2013-2017, co-curating exhibitions and forums with a focus on generating dialogue around gender, feminism and contemporary art. She is currently a member of Ensayos, an international collective research practice centered on extinction, human geography and coastal health.
Co-commissioned with the Tarrawarra Biennial.
Image: Caitlin Franzmann, 2020, ‘to the curve of you (Achira)’, still from video documentation by Charlie Hillhouse.
