Contemporary artists, including Diana Lelonek, are increasingly turning to plant-based, ephemeral – and therefore, by definition, impermanent – components, making their transience, unpredictability and biological temporality an essential component of the expression, artistic concept and meaning of their works. In the process of designing ephemeral works of art using plants as a medium, artists often employ tools and procedures familiar from the biological sciences, incorporating the agency of non-human factors – such as light, temperature and hydration – into the creative process. In doing so, they do not hesitate to utilise technological tools that act as intermediaries between plant organisms and the viewer, enabling biological processes to be revealed, even though this results in specific interpretative frameworks being imposed on artefacts created with the use of natural materials. Through these objects, artists often actively participate in critical debate on current ethical and social issues, such as the problem of environmental exploitation in the Anthropocene , positioning themselves within the materialist or relational turn.

This trend, evident in artistic practice over recent decades, challenges the traditional understanding of a work of art as an object with a stable ‘final state’, shifting the emphasis to its processual nature, whilst at the same time presenting exhibition institutions and conservators with new challenges relating to its presentation, conservation, documentation and protection. Consequently, exhibition strategies for such ephemeral works cease to be merely a means of presentation, becoming instead an element that helps shape the work’s identity.

Diana Lelonek’s ‘Trash Plants’

One project that clearly illustrates these interrelationships is the Centre for Living Things, established by Lelonek in 2016 – a para-institutional space focused on research, combining the characteristics of a laboratory, an archive and a cabinet of curiosities, established to ‘map wild forest, suburban, meadow, wetland, inner-city and other sites in terms of the types of substrate found there, the relationships occurring between de-objectified and plant tissues, and the use of post-objective materials as new forms of habitat for non-human actors’ (Lelonek).

As part of this project , so-called ‘rubbish plants’ are collected – that is, waste overgrown with perennials, mosses, lichens and fungi. The collected objects exist at the intersection of nature and culture, serving as examples of hybrid forms of life developing in an environment heavily transformed by human activity. Their nature defies traditional conservation categories, which assume the stability and unambiguity of a material object. By documenting such phenomena, Lelonek reflects on the problem of overproduction and progressive environmental pollution in the Anthropocene era. At the same time, she raises questions about the complex relationships between human and non-human actors and their mutual entanglements within ecological, geological, physical, social and material systems.

Spotted. Overseas locations where Lelonek has exhibited ‘rubbish plants’

Initially, most of the Centre for Living Things’ collection was displayed in a greenhouse or outdoors, in specially designated areas of the Botanical Garden of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Originally conceived as an intimate project, it took on a broader scale of presentation in subsequent years – it was shown as part of temporary exhibitions, including at the RIBOCA International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Riga ( 2016), at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade ( “Overview Effect”, 2021), the Tallinn Art Hall (“The Art of Being Good”, 2019), the Kunstmuseum Bonn ( “Dorothea von Stetten Art Award 2022. Young Art from Poland”, 2022), the Museum Tinguely in Basel ( “Territories of Waste”, 2022) and at zone2source in the Glazen Huis in Amstelpark, Amsterdam ( “Material Flows”, 2025).

In the latter case, the institution has permanently incorporated “rubbish plants” into its collection. Polymer objects, such as a toilet seat or a PET bottle, were placed in wooden crates filled with soil and arranged side by side in a designated section of the garden situated in the corner of the parkland surrounding the gallery. This form of presentation emphasises their status as hybrid life forms, developing at the interface between biological processes and the waste products of civilisation, whilst also situating the project within a curatorial reflection on the circulation of materials, colonial determinants of waste management and the ‘afterlife’ of plastics.

Challenges associated with the conservation of ‘rubbish plants’

Exhibiting works from Diana Lelonek’s Centre for Living Things collection presents a challenge on every occasion. Ephemeral by their very nature, ‘rubbish plants’ require constant supervision, including the monitoring of parameters such as air circulation, temperature, humidity levels, watering methods and frequency, UV radiation intensity and microbiological diversity. Methods currently available for their conservation include, amongst others, microfadeometry (which enables the light sensitivity of the objects to be determined), dust measurements, physico-chemical analyses of the microclimate, and microbiological analyses of the air and the surfaces of the objects. Work of this kind presents a conservation challenge not only for indoor display cases but also for outdoor exhibitions, owing to the unpredictability of weather conditions . Consequently, every decision regarding their display affects not only the way an object is presented, but also its biological functioning.

Strategies for exhibiting ‘rubbish plants’

As part of the aforementioned exhibitions, ‘rubbish plants’ were displayed in display cases-aquariums, on reproductions or in gardens . On each occasion, Lelonek collaborated with the conservation and curatorial team to design the arrangements of the objects, usually composing them in the form of gardens. Although the chosen arrangements served to enhance the visual appeal of the ‘rubbish plants’, the artist consistently opposed any interference with the structure of the objects themselves, ensuring that conditions were maintained during the exhibitions to sustain their biological processes.

The exhibitions mentioned above situated the ‘rubbish plants’ within various discourses relevant to the project’s concept – concerning, amongst other things , contemporary art and the experience of catastrophe in the Anthropocene . On numerous occasions, the exhibitions addressed the issue of the global circulation of waste , interpreted in the context of geographical and historical colonial relations, as well as the viewer’s responsibility for helping to shape the environment. ‘Rubbish Plants’ were also incorporated into broader reflections on the (in)visibility of waste and its emancipatory potential . The Lelonek project thus became a space for reflection on the need to redefine the relationship between human and non-human forms of life, and on the possibility of developing new models of coexistence.

Despite successive relocations and changing methods of caring for the ‘rubbish plants’, the project has not lost its educational and scientific value. In line with the artist’s intention, it retains an ‘open’ character – it is constantly updated both through the introduction of new interpretative contexts and through modifications to the methods of presentation, which allows it to continually respond to changing social, ecological and institutional needs.

***

This text is the result of research carried out whilst preparing a dissertation entitled ‘Strategies for exhibiting ephemeral art: the case of selected “rubbish-plant” exhibitions by Diana Lelonek’, written under the supervision of Dr Anna Kowalik as part of the Postgraduate Studies for Managers of Care, Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr Anna Kowalik, Diana Lelonek and Paweł Drabarczyk (also known as Grabarczyk) for their expert support and inspiring comments throughout the process of writing this text.