Preserving Fragility
Preserving Fragility is the first solo show of the artist Diana Baltag and represents the beginning of a project that brings together drawings, journals, objects and pressed plants. The exhibition urges us to introspection and draws a bridge between the artist’s personal experiences and the habit of pressing plants as an act of preserving small, simple things that we do not pay immediate attention to. This mapping of the past and the representation of plant elements as a substitute for human presence, aims to draw a link between the material and the immaterial.
By attempting to create an exhibition that functions as a visual diary, the aim is to record how we can preserve parts of ourselves and parts of the past. Personal history unfolds before the audience in the form of messages written around the plants and we witness deep-rooted fears, vulnerability and fragility being put on the table.
The relationship between the two mediums is a result of the ephemerality and delicacy of both sides. The texts that accompany the drawings include existential questions, excerpts from Emily Dickinson’s poems, notes that provide conclusive information about a period of reflection and a foray into the artist’s past.
The exhibited notebooks fulfill a double role: that of diary-folder. The diary is a visual representation of privacy and a keeper of secrets. The folder is a keeper of order. In the exhibited folders, plants are divided into categories, arranged according to colors, shapes, textures and sizes.
2023
