In the work series "Collected Stories" Flo Maak explores questions about "naturecultures" - the mutual relationship and interweaving of nature and culture - and our coexistence with animals, plants and rock formations in the Anthropocene. Within this series, for example, Maak shows photographs of the plant Chromolaena odorata in the installation "The Red Green" (2020), which is found worldwide and is used in many places as a medicinal plant.
Also known as Siamese herb in this country, its names in different parts of the world reflect people's relationship to this plant. For example, the herbaceous plant is sometimes named "Devil's Weed" or "Communist Pacha" and is associated with the communist movement in Kerala, South India.
Flo Maak photographed various specimens of this plant against a staged background in Kochi, India. He combines the photographs taken on site with a hand-woven flag and a text wall piece in the exhibition space, thereby unfolding narratives of the worldwide spread of Chromolaena odorata. At the same time, he asks on a meta-level about cultural attributions of myths of origin and migration movements, as well as the apparent nativeness of cultivated nature.
Flo Maak's series of works "Ground Truthing - Mount Etna" (2020) was photographed at the titular volcano Etna in Sicily. Details of the volcanic landscape - such as rock formations - are juxtaposed with photographic details of body parts or remnants of human infrastructure near the still now and then active volcano. The play with cropped sections of the image, grid-like shadow formations and rampant body hair unfolds its own humour in the combination, which suggests open meta-narratives. In ambiguous references, individual visual fragments of found (landscape) sceneries and staged motifs each form their own stories about the coexistence of humans, animals, rocks, volcanoes and matter in general.
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