Year after year, with never-ending longing and searching for new connections, we try to revive the long-lost and sacred harmony between us, humans and nature. We believe that by merging the signs, symbols, images, and visions handed down to us, we can create bricks from which we can model a paradisiacal, sacred unity. We want to transform not only our bodies but also our spirits in order to feel more intensely, to gain greater knowledge, and to learn to use our powers for better purposes.

The contemporary art exhibition entitled Oh, how I wish I were a tree in the forest… presents the art of three artists with different motivations but similar theoretical approaches. The song referenced in the exhibition’s title is a Hungarian folk song about the sorrow of love, in which the narrator, in his grief, wants to become a tree so that he can heal the flawed world by bursting into flames. As in the song, the motif of transformation runs through the works presented in the exhibition, inspired by the desire to expand sensory experience, increase agency, and reunite with nature and healing.

The artists and curators working on the exhibition treated their femininity and the resulting perspective as a focal point throughout. The idea of the connection between nature and women can also be recognized in the basic assumptions of ecofeminism, according to which the combination of the two categories falls within the realm of emotion and intuition, as opposed to the pair of concepts of masculine rationality and civilization. According to this idea, the feminine quality is fundamentally closer to nature and therefore also belongs to it in the logic of exploitation. Emancipation is not conceived of in isolation, but only in and through its intertwining with nature. All this can be compared to the widely cited researcher Donna Haraway’s concept of kinship, which can arise between different species, humans and non-humans, i.e. plants, animals and microorganisms, but the theory can also be boldly extended to the realm of cooperation with spirits and other spiritual, inexplicable phenomena.

The works presented here also reflect Haraway’s idea of transformation and hybridity, where the physical forms of femininity and various plant organ systems merge, allowing us to witness their spiritual transformation. Beyond this, the exhibition also reveals a winding but sometimes dangerous path, at the end of which—if we take the right steps—we can find refuge and healing in nature and the ancient, folk, magical, and spiritual content associated with it.

(Text by Luca Fábián, Virág Fehér and Kinga Kovács, curators)