On May 18th, the International Museum Day is celebrated and, as usual, ping! and Galeria Municipal do Porto also celebrates the International Fascination of Plants Day. Evgenia Emets guides a Walk through the Gardens as a result of a residency she developed in the Gardens of Palácio de Cristal and creates a pop-up exhibition in front of Galeria Municipal do Porto.
Based on the Eternal Forest project, focused on careful research into the connection between communities and the forest and the urgency of reflecting on these relationships, which are often based on extractive logic, the artist shows us the species of trees that exist here and proposes a collective experience of writing from what the plants tell us while establishing relationships and stories behind each one of them.
The walk celebrates the fauna and flora of Jardim do Palácio de Cristal, in a joint exaltation of different life forms through the perspective of time and our perceptions of time – organic and cyclical, time of nature, time of plants and forests and human-dominated structured and linear time experienced through the landscape architecture of the garden and the stories of plants.
Marking the International Day for the Fascination of Plants, we revisit the Cedar of Lebanon, the Acanthus, the Ginkgo Biloba and other ancient trees, accompanied by poems by Emets, but also by authors such as Giovanni Aloi, Ellen Lima, Stefano Mancuso, Gille Clément, Gilgamesh Epic and Evgenia’s poetry and storytelling.
Plant Time art experience, Gardens of Palácio de Cristal, 2024
Photos: Diogo Meira and Jorge Moreira
‘We are at the threshold of time, all that came before is already gone, all that is coming is unknown to us. Passing through the gate of time, we remove all obligations, promises, and commitments to the oppressive structures that govern our time, we release all shackles, hooks and braces, that imprison us in the time caged.
I invite you to take a deep breath in and breathe out. One by one enter through the gate of time as you leave behind all the preconceptions of time dominating your life. And the quality of time itself that governs your life, leave it here. We will rediscover other possible times and temporalities today.
Come, vegetal time, root time, branch time, grow slowly, downwards, upwards, weave your dreamy structures. Weave the threads of our lives with yours, release us from the tangles of culture that have forgotten life, from the cords of deadly limiting thoughts.
Let us weave again together my time and your time, let us re-create the fabric of our inter-being, becoming intertwined with every breath a little more. As we share our breath, let us weave together a new story.’ – Evgenia Emets, 2024
Plant Time pop-up exhibition, Gardens of Palácio de Cristal, Galeria Municipal do Porto, 2024
Photos: Evgenia Emets, 2024
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