A Trace Of You

In Communist Romania's standardised grey apartment blocks, potted plants were quiet gestures of resistance that brought warmth, colour, and life to otherwise sterile and impersonal spaces. They were tiny gestures of individuality - a declaration of presence and humanity. This work engages with that history through a photograph from the Communist period discovered in an antique shop: three men proudly posing with a potted plant, as if cherishing a companion. Using the technique of chlorophyll printing, the picture is printed directly onto living leaves collected from the very same apartment buildings where such plants once lived. The choice of material creates a conversation between medium and subject: a plant reproducing its own image through human memory. Some of the prints are imperfect, mirroring how memory itself can deteriorate. The work ponders how both histories and lives only endure in delicate, fractured remains.