Migration
and
Plant
Silke
Wagner
Migration
Silke
6.04.- 6.10.2019
Migration and Plant is a project by artist Silke Wagner. Kunstverein Heilbronn invited the artist, who was born in Göppingen in 1968 and now lives in Frankfurt / Main, to realize this artistic project in the city center of Heilbronn during the Federal Horticultural Show.
With Migration and Plant Silke Wagner refers to a particular feature of the city, where the share of the population with a migration background is 53%; 140 different nations live in Heilbronn.
Migration and Plant visually connects the route between the station, the entrance and grounds of the BUGA (Federal Horticultural Show) and the Kunstverein Heilbronn / Kunsthalle Vogelmann. Along this axis, Silke Wagner’s works are presented on the glass facades of bus and railway shelters.
Two botanical names respectively form the starting point for her floral representations. The two names each designate an indigenous (native) plant and a neophyte, meaning a newly introduced plant. Each of the plant representations indicates a statistical value concerning migration issues, such as labor migration and flight, the proportion of immigrants compared to emigrants, the at-risk-of-poverty rate of migrant children, the proportion of women with a migration background in leadership positions, and so on.
Kunstverein Heilbronn helped elucidate this by creating a bilingual flyer with Silke Wagner, available free of charge in many places around Heilbronn, that marks the location of each of the works.
Snoeck Verlag published a bilingual manual with further texts and accompanying materials, which is available at Kunstverein Heilbronn.
The migration of plants has always been a constant and unobtrusive phenomenon, and we all integrate flowers and plants with a »migration background« in our gardens, flower vases and on our plates. We are generally quite unaware of the natural and everyday nature of this »form of integration« we have apparently achieved.
