Flat Octopus presented the weekend event Unwanted Garden by Anna Cherednikova in Residence Botkyrka’s apartment, 10-12 February, 2023. Curated by Juanma González.
When a man settled and abandoned hunting as the primary living activity and started cultivating the soil, he began a long relationship with plants. Since the beginning of agriculture, humanity has selected those plants that, for one reason or another, have seemed to be better: by the size of the fruit or the seed, by the shape, by the color, by their resistance to diseases…
At the same time, there are also undesirable plants: weeds and adventive plants. Those plants which appear in the wrong places, where humans do not want them to be. Every year the EU spends millions of euros to prevent them from growing, using pesticides or getting rid of them manually. Some of these plants were introduced by human activities through trade exchange or migration.
Anna Cherednikova, The study of resistance, 2020. Photo: Anna Cherednikova
Anna Cherednikova (b. 1986) is educated in Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense in Madrid and received Postmaster education at Kungliga Konsthögskolan in Stockholm.
She mainly works with photography and installation where she explores the relationship between man and nature. Her work has previously been shown at B93 and XPO Gallery in the Netherlands, Arena Gallery, in Arles, France, Armenia Art Fair and Liljevalchs Konsthall, to name a few.
Flat Octopus is an international artist- and curator-run collective in Stockholm, Sweden, initiated in 2019. It consists of seven people of different professional and cultural backgrounds. Flat Octopus organises exhibitions in different apartments located in Stockholm, as well as external collaborations and projects.
Flat Octopus are: Edit Fándly, Juanma González, Paulina Granat, Amr Hamid, Alice Máselníková and Erik Wijkström.
The program was supported by Stockholm stad and Kulturrådet. Residence Botkurka is supported by Botkyrkabyggen.