Tired Palm Trees
Tired Palm Trees
UGM Kabinet (Maribor Art Gallery), Strossmayerjeva ulica 6, Maribor
+ The Judgment Tower & The Crypt (Minoriti), Pristan 8, Maribor
8 March–10 April 2025
exhibition opening: Saturday, 8 March 2025, 11:00, Auditorium Minoriti
artists: Darko Aleksovski, Marko Brecelj, Mateja Bučar, Víctor Cruz & Hugo Portillo, Vadim Fiškin, Metka Krašovec, Edith Payer, Tadej Pogačar, Christina Helena Romirer, Katrin Ströbel, Roswitha Weingrill
This exhibition is not an exhibition about palm trees. It borrows the palm tree as a symbolic image. A symbol with manifold meanings. Plants at large, not just palm trees, have always held a highly symbolic and therefore political character. They must embellish, trivialise, cover up or greenwash. In the exhibition, they have become tired. Tired of the burden of all the projections they have had to absorb, of the actual torments they have been exposed to or of the unending misinterpretations and misuses of their habitat. Tired palm trees are symptomatic of the fatigue in a society that cannot find rest despite sleep. Palm trees offer themselves as surfaces for projections with multiple interpretations – somewhere between the luxuriant distance, the dreamed vacation feelings or the sad tropics, the tristes tropiques (Lévi-Strauss). Due to the increasing warming of the planet, palm trees and their friends will soon be able to live anywhere and everywhere. However, changes in the Earth's climate pose a massive threat to their natural habitats. Even hardy plants such as palm trees can no longer withstand storms, floods, heat waves or frost. The increasing number of natural disasters and associated dangers forebode their future and the future of mankind. At the same time, palm trees are souvenirs and witnesses to colonial practices, that for centuries arbitrarily shipped across the world, categorised in what they believed to be the scientific classification, and exploited to death not only humans, but also their botanical fellows. Further, the symbol of the palm tree contains so much hope, longing, wishful thinking and wistful desire. Despite all the political adversity, we dream of a better world…
Tired Palm Trees is a transnational exhibition project that changes at each exhibition venue and is anchored anew locally. Versions of it have already been organized at Pavelhaus – Pavlova hiša in Laafeld (2019), Le Cube - independent art room in Rabat (2022) and Art Sonje Center in Seoul (2024). In 2026 it will travel to Museo MARTE, San Salvador. With support and contributions by many artists and curator-colleagues David Kranzelbinder, Elisabeth Piskernik, Heehyun Cho and Jure Kirbiš.
This edition of Tired Palm Trees is produced by Maribor Art Gallery and is curated by Markus Waitschacher and Jure Kirbiš. Minoriti and Maribor Puppet Theatre are partners in the project.
