PLANT STORIES #2 Mourning Flora
Opening of public installation by Andrea Acosta & Ece Eldek
29 JUNE 2025 / 18:00
The collaborative artwork by Andrea Acosta and Ece Eldek explores the notion of ghost species: plants that have disappeared or are on the brink of extinction, yet linger in memory, myth, or trace. Responding to architectural features of the ZK/U grounds—such as the circular plot in the courtyard and the building’s exposed beams—Acosta and Eldek turn their attention to what is no longer visible. Confronted with a dusty, vacant patch of earth, they began to ask: what once grew here, and how might we remember—or even summon—it through the act of naming and storytelling?
With this commissioned work for PLANT STORIES, they propose an intervention in these spaces through a series of botanical tags, akin to those used in gardens or arboreta. But rather than identifying extant species, each tag marks an absence: a vanished or imagined plant, conjured through poetic and speculative writing. These texts gesture toward what has been lost, but also toward what might return—through language, memory, or the collective imagination.
On June 29, the installation will be opened to the public and activated through a sharing circle, inviting participants to gather around this symbolic space of absence. Together, we will reflect on what once was, what may still resonate, and how new stories can emerge from the fertile ground of loss.
ANDREA ACOSTA is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the shifting relationships between nature, landscape, and the built environment. Rooted in field research across urban and rural contexts, her process-based practice integrates sculpture, installation, drawing, and photography to examine how matter, perception, and place are continuously transformed. Through gestures of collection, activation, and speculation, she investigates the tensions between organic and industrial materialities, proposing alternative ecologies of attention and care. Her work has been shown internationally in Europe, Latin America and Asia and she has been artist in residence at the Palais de Tokyo, the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau and the Cite des Arts in Paris, among others.
ECE ELDEK is a conceptual artist and poet based in Istanbul and Berlin, working with video, photography, performance, installation and poetry. Her work focuses on networks of social, political and cultural relationships, and on interwoven mechanisms and processes. Based on the idea that subjective experience is reshaped and generated by the environment, memory and socio-political space, she positions herself as an artist in various networks of relationships and explores them from the inside. She is one of the founding members of the art initiatives TOZ Artist Run Space and Her Hal in Istanbul and is co-founder and editor of the online magazine Moero. Eldek has shown her artistic work in numerous international exhibitions and biennials, including at the Istanbul Biennial, SALT Galata Istanbul and the Piccadilly International Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea.