Supporting Actors

 

Plants, Trondheim

Context specific installation

Dimensions variable

Trondheim, Norway

2021 – ongoing

 

The project Supporting Actors was exhibited as my Master project at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in May 2022. Monstera plants were installed at three different locations in central Trondheim as a way of highlighting the gentrification process that’s happening in Trondheim right now.  

 

The purpose of the project is to create awareness about gentrification and to explore what role art plays in urban development. How can we use art in city making and in public spaces as a way of raising important social, political, and economic issues and developing a new understanding of built environments? How can art and urban development contribute to more equal, inclusive, and democratic societies?

 

Plants are a central part of making an area more vibrant and inviting, and an important element in the gentrification process. Because of this, they symbolize transition and change; social, economic, and cultural. The plants also represent the human aspect of gentrification. Houseplants are not something you would normally see in industrial areas; they usually arrive first when people move into the area. When the old buildings are being demolished, new apartment complexes are being built and the people who used to live and work there, no longer can afford to do so. A houseplant comes with a certain type of expectations. It’s a controlled and domesticized piece of nature, adapted for growing indoors and created over time to fit our current lifestyles, and we expect to see them in contexts such as private homes, offices, institutions, etc. The Monstera plant is the starting point and core of the creation of a new potential space within an already existing space. The object itself symbolizes a specific environment and atmosphere and it’s a physical representation of a possible future reality.