Still from 'Tears on my leaves' (2020), 1min 42secs, single screen HD video, sound.
Chlorophilia : Artists : Olga Koroleva
Still from 'Tears on my leaves' (2020), 1min 42secs, single screen HD video, sound.
About the artwork
Tears on my leaves is a tiny video portrait of the medicinal plant Callisia Fragrans, endemic to Mexico, whose leaves I use for their anaesthetic properties to help with fibromyalgia.
It marks a new trajectory in my practice that explores vegetal narratives concurrent in humans and plants. While Callisia's 'tears' are a result of guttation whereby droplets of sap form along the edges of leaves of some vascular plants, this first person narrative from the point of view of the plant suggest symbiotic human-plant entanglements.
Music by Samuel Holloway.
About the artist
I am a Russian-born, London-based artist-researcher-curator-forager-lecturer of Tatar and Slavic descent. I work with recorded and live media, photography, and writing. I am the founder of the international peer-group The Political Animal. Since 2016 I have been working within the field of animal theory.
Currently, there are four distinct environments in my practice: a speculative multispecies storytelling project themed around the notion and practice of healing, a supernatural love story performance and video project with a scent narrative based on the poem Le Gars, a collaborative oceanic research project focused on recognition of more-than-human personhood and cetacean rehabilitation efforts and an exploration of vegetal worlds and how plants can help us visualise hidden disability, via a decolonial detour mapping trajectories of plant propagation.
Photo credit: Rosalind Hobley