Processes of unstable chemistry
2023
Botanical dyes from wild madder, madder, weld, indigo, lac, wild fennel, chestnut, oak, onion, chlorophyllin, horsetail, coreopsis, anthemis, poppy, rose, bramble, pomegranate, avocado, maple, willow, iron sulphate, aluminium sulphate, soda ash, vinegar, different kinds of local wool, second-hand cotton fabrics, repurposed wood, glazed ceramics, metal structure, dried roots, garden cuttings. 

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Photo: Michaela Lakova
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Photo: Michaela Lakova
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Photo: Michaela Lakova
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Photo: Michaela Lakova
Photo: Michaela Lakova
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Photo: Michaela Lakova
Photo: Michaela Lakova
Photo: Michaela Lakova
Photo: Michaela Lakova
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Photo: Michaela Lakova
To hold
To keep
To grab 
To grasp
To hug
To embrace
To contain
Finding things and carrying them with you because they are important and creating a sacred space where to put them.
A home, a tree, a tower, an insect with big antennas, an outside, an inside. A wardrobe. A drying rack. An animal. A shrine. A chest containing all the treasures, holding all the precious things found in the garden. Roots, fragile findings. The plants, and their colours.
It embraces and contains the results of my processes, the knowledge I slowly build. The unstable dyes fading in the light. 
A domestic space.
The need to reconfigure the domestic again and again.
Green lines. Chemically unstable shades of green.
Loose fibers, but holding together. Sticking  to each other just enough to hold up.
Disappearing species. Disappearing knowledge. Disappearing colors.
On the ground fibers concentrate in soft islands, places where to stay.
“ […] when dyeing involves walking, visiting certain places repeatedly, finding abundance of a plant, gardening, gathering, bringing home something, having hands dirty of soil and plant residues, colours become a way of relating to my surroundings and keeping personal memories with me. These processes mean loving, bonding. They are a way of making home, relating again and again to a place and its multiple living beings throughout time.  
What does it mean to work with something that is fading and changing and is fragile? It resonates with how I perceive my life. Precarious and in continuous transformation. I try to make my practice a place where I can embrace fragility, because this is true with how I feel. Something that is precarious and needs to be taken care of. But it is also precious and resilient.
We stabilise many things, we want what we make to stay the way we made it. But making something last almost forever, preserving, is a human perspective, not that of the colour, the plant, the animal. Longing to preserve coexists with the urgency for things to go back to earth without provoking harm. It’s a double need: to leave the world to future generations, to accumulate less, to keep and preserve, to let go and endure. […] „
Extract from my thesis Journeys of mutation, April 2023
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