Julius Von Bismarck

Julius von Bismarck is a German artist who works across various mediums, from photography to video, installation, and performance, creating works that explore the complexity of human perception and our relationship with nature. He often starts from the dichotomy of perception because as human beings, we think we perceive the world as it is, but in reality, our vision is shaped by our culture and our own mental constructs. His series of works I like flowers takes its name from the famous children’s nursery rhyme “I like flowers, I like daffodils...” and consists of plants and small animals pressed flat. Like in the children’s song, the beauty of nature seems to be the main theme; however, unlike the childhood practice of pressing flowers between the pages of a book or creating herbariums to classify and archive vegetation, the work converts plants and small animals on a large scale, transforming our own intimate landscape. The imposing sculptures are made up of dried plants pressed so tightly that they seem to have lost their third dimension, reduced to simple images. The artist thus alludes to a form of typically Western exoticism, and to a common practice in scientific institutes and museums: the construction of a herbarium where nature can be cataloged and classified, but which often ignores the colonial background of botanical collections and the crucial role played in the history of colonialism by the plant trade.