Listening to the Colour Blue and Tasting the Smell of Dandelion Yellow

Jeanette Schäring
Exhibition
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Synaesthesia
I am braiding with naked skin, the hair of Gaia and my grandmother,
coloured blue I am moving in the cybernetic future
navigating with my ancestors’ cells,
in special extension 
Jeanette Schäring


Our sensory systems integrate experiences of our existential encounter with the world, bringing us the truth and the magic of the world. Creating colours and fibres from plants means engaging in slow processes with soil, bacteria, water, scents, senses, the moon, and a holistic and emotional physical commitment. Plants and plant colours are modalities of our coexistence.

Transcending from green to blue with the indigo plant is to experience colouring processes that connect the earth and the sea with the sky. This turning blue is not just a shade; it is connecting with nature and ecology, a web of light, energy, photosynthesis, sensuality, sound and moving bodies.

When the plant's pigment becomes visible, it is also a story about tradition, cultural values, the qualities of the water, the soil, the microclimate experienced by plants, and the fermentation processes. The same is true of plant fibres and many other properties of plants. I examine my attitudes towards plants while seeking to respect everything and everyone alive now, and everything and everyone dead then.

The exhibition will be an experimental plant, colour and fibre lab, and a vision of life as colour. But, it is also about plant colouring and its relationship to our foodplants, about health, and about how we meet as humans in a multisensorial world of interconnected sensations.
 

Jeanette Schäring occupies the room with a mixture of material, multimedia, poetry and an experimental approach to the space and the visitors. She sets the table and invites the visitors to take a seat in the performance "The stain on the tablecloth" and during the exhibition she invites to talks, invites special guests, gives workshops and more.

Schäring is internationally active and deeply rooted in an ecological and holistic way of thinking. She recently returned from New Zealand where she lived during lockdowns and pandemics, at the same time taking the opportunity to study the Maori traditional arts and crafts with fibres and braiding (Raranga) and their health and medicinal plants (Rongoa). Essential to these studies is the Maori's interconnected approach to nature and the world, subjects that Schäring takes to her heart. Her work focuses on artistic research of colour from plants relating to water and light and also how the colour from plants connects us as humans through perception, life course, wisdom and health. She explores how different cultures in direct, spontaneous encounters with the colours of plants can open our senses and sensuality to better understand complexity, materiality and spirituality as well as sensitising us to the magic of our world. In exploratory processes, she uses colours from plants as indicators of the sensitivity of our ecosystems and highlights the importance of seeing the connectedness of everything alive. For Schäring, it is important to see colour and fibre as carriers of cultural value and as mediators of sustainable ecological inspiration.