Imagining a herbarium | Portfolio Pulse

Imagining a Herbarium (2023)

In the project Imagining a Herbarium, I researched visual narratives surrounding the relationship between poisonous plants and humans, and how this relationship manifested during the witch hunts in Hungary and Slovakia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This phenomenon is examined as a consequence of the sexual politics of the capitalist class, the mechanisation of the body, and the domination of both nature and human beings.

Through my research and artworks, I aim to retell the transhistorical stories of poisonous plants and explore the connections between their symbolic and historical “enslavement” and the historical subjugation of women.

The project was exhibited in Maleficae: From Bonfires to Online Witchcraft at Budapest Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, in 2024.

Cyberwitch

Oil, rust and pastel on canvas, 160 cm x 190 cm, 2023
Photo: Johannes Bendzulla