Touch me not,
Forget me not
Estufa Fria de Lisboa, 2024, Lisbon, Portugal
The human fingers on Mimosa leaves make them curl, withdraw. Their name relates to shame, shyness and
resembling. An organism with flexing muscles also named Touch me not. They briefly recall a name they once had
before,Touch me not. Another plant, Myosotis or Forget me not, works well against muscle pain. The muscle memory
of its root lingers and reverberates through subtle shivers on its petals for generations. They briefly remember a
name they once had before, Forget me not.
The title alludes to two plants removed from their natural habitat, Mimosa and Myosotis, also known as Touch Me Not and Forget Me Not. Both appear in Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae (1735), where plants, animals, and minerals were classified through systems of naming and categorisation. The work reflects on how acts of naming shape relationships to colonial histories, identity, the body, and the more-than-human world.
Materials: silkscreen prints of analog photographs combined with embroidery, jute, and fabrics inherited by the artist's late grandmother, dyed with spices, fruits, and plants.
Through repetition, gesture, and the tactile language of textiles, the patchwork explores the spaces between categories and the potential of what remains fluid. Plants and spines grow in unforeseen directions, revealing subtle hints of animality and sensuality, while the hegemonic pose is still present.
Inspired by the Swedish poet Gunnar Björling's reflections on naming, the work asks what it means to give something a name, what is remembered, what is forgotten, and what continues to exist beyond the forms and categories through which we attempt to understand the world.
We went not namelessly away
our life was to give name
and word and form,
give eye's light
give stone and the sand
to learn that and we not did learn
and that under world's name and name
go deepest
namelessly away'
- Gunnar Björling, Ord och att ej annat (1945), translated by Fredrik Hertzberg.
