“i like the flowers, i like the daffodils . . .” — the well-known children’s song lends its name to this series, which consists of plants and small animals that have been pressed flat. as in the children’s song, the beauty of nature seems to be the main theme here. in contrast to the childhood practice of pressing flowers between the pages of a book, however, or creating herbaria to classify and archive vegetation, the work converts large-scale plants and small trees into almost two-dimensional forms. suspended delicately in space, they become likenesses of themselves reminiscent of floral wall- paper or backdrops.


The plants presented here are not, how- ever, mere images of floral beauty. They also allude to the brutality inherent in the Western concep- tion of nature. scaled up to the size of the plants on display, the violence of the works’ production becomes impossible to ignore. in an elaborate pro- cess, the plants are boiled and then robbed of their third dimension with the help of a 50-ton hydraulic press and press oven, and finally attached to a thin stainless-steel plate.


The series consists exclusively of species not native to central Europe. many of these once “exotic” plants now decorate our offices and homes. To this day, they often bear the names given them by their European “discoverers.” originally from madagascar, the Bismarckia nobilis or Bismarck palm was dedicated to the first chancellor of the German Empire, otto von Bismarck. Previously, however, it went by its native name. These original names, many of which have been forgotten or are unknown today in the Global north, testify to the ongoing process of Europe’s appropriation of nature.