Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Experimental photography »

My Mother Planted Me a Tree (2020–2025) explores memory, affection, and nature through a flamboyant tree planted by the artist’s mother during childhood. The mother planted a tree for each of her three children; the artist’s tree still stands today in front of the house where she grew up, with its welcoming garden—a space to imagine futures alongside her brother.

The flamboyant becomes the starting point for revisiting origins and reflecting on time, roots, and the urgency of reconnecting human beings with nature. Family photographs, personal images, embroidery, and frottages of the flamboyant’s surface weave together childhood and the present. The flamboyant emerges as a symbol of ancestry and continuity, while the garden reveals itself as a territory of hope.

This work is an invitation to reflect on the future. In the name of progress, trees are cut down daily and replaced by concrete in large metropolises. Yet they are essential for life; without them, how will we survive? Planting a tree is a gesture of resistance, a call to re-enchantment with life and to the preservation of nature.