Una Szeemann uses dead organic matter such as leather, hair, plaster, copper, bronze, bones, rope, and dried plants. Oftentimes, her large-scale objects dangle from heavy metal chains into the exhibition space which grants them an almost persona-like aura, especially when she uses hair from horse tails. Una Szeemann’s practice is based on research within the realms of anthropology, psychoanalysis, including hypnosis, and biology. Through the various materials she strives to bring forth the invisible that doesn’t exist any longer but has left traces in the present. Like an alchemist, Szeemann tries to materialize these traces of bodies, thoughts, and the unconscious. In poetic ways that bear an intriguing closeness to modern day witchcraft, she attempts to preserve what otherwise would quickly sink into oblivion and features the transference of bodies and natural materials into different oftentimes intangible states.
In October 2021, Una Szeemann set out to dry impressively large banana flowers she had gathered from Tegna, her second domicile located in Ticino (CH). Following a slow drying process, Szeemann handed the dried strongly diminished plants to the foundry to transform them into long lasting bronzes. After the casting was completed, the foundry smelled of banana, as if the banana flower’s ghost was still hovering in proximity to its dead shell.
Una Szeemann lays four cast bronze sculptures, titled The Birds Said You Move I-IV, on a plinth bearing the character of a table on which presents are laid out. Thus, the banana flowers not only underwent eternalization through the foundry process, but they are also presented like offerings. The formerly lavish organic banana flower, meant to perish after florescence, has become a valuable symbol for both abundance and fertility. There is evidence that the banana was already part of the human diet in the seventh century b.c. According to an old legend from the Myanmar region, the humans mimicked the birds’ habit of eating the fruit. Hence, one of the earliest names used for the ba- nana, to which the title of Szeemann’s sculptures alludes, was: It was the birds that told it.
In terms of botany, the first florescence, known as the banana heart, is also the last as the pseudostem of the banana plant dies. Although offshoot will normally have developed from the base so that the plant as a whole survives. However, the fact that the pseudostem, or corm, dies after only one reproductive cycle somewhat sanctifies the banana flower and underlines Una Szeemann’s sublimating foundry procedure. The banana flower turned bronze has taken on an almost otherworldly appearance. The stem below the banana fruits leading to the massive banana flower that now resembles the knob of an ancient weapon, looks like a backbone. By turning blossoming organic matter into a dead but ennobled material, Una Szeemann has shifted the viewers’ focus. It is no longer placed on the loss of past beauty but on the new attributes meant to last forever.
Judith Opferkuch
