58 Sunsets (Paradise) — Neyde Lantyer

PARADISE
[OR 58 SUNSETS]
Live plants, photograhps, texts, objects
Variable dimensions
2024

Installation at New Babylon Exhibition, NDSM Fuse Gallery, Amsterdam 2024.

ABOUT THE WORK:

According to Australian political scientist Sarah Maddison, colonization is “the effect that the other and the other's territory are yours to take and denounce, because inferior - less efficient, less rational, and/or less complete in some sense”. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that the desire to possess the landscape and transform it ultimately is the desire to subjugate it into something else (more efficient, rational and complete).

I grow plants on my small new balcony as an attempt to chart my own territory in this new neighborhood in progress. It is my own colonized place, between constructions, cranes, excavations, poisoned soil, brand-new buildings, empty spaces, aborted promises of bridges and parks or commerce, and a constant lost sense of direction. But surrounded by water and plenty of light and sky.

I used to have an indoor jungle in my old apartment, before moving to Amsterdam Noord. Is a three-square-meter balcony a likely place to cultivate the lost feeling of being close to nature? And for us, foreigners, is it enough to fulfill that much-desired tropical sensation? Perhaps the opportunity to own the landscape and colonize it according to that dream?

PARADISE (58 SUNSETS) is an arrangement with plants, prints and objects, a hybrid of natural and artificial environments that I had to maintain for 6 months, the time the exhibition remained in the gallery. I cared for the plants in an artificially hostile setting, ensuring their continued growth and greenery. The work was an ode to the bourgeois balcony culture of Amsterdam Noord, the rosé wine, open parties, sailing boats and the omnipresent soundtrack of summer festivals - almost as much as the constant noise of non-stop building during the weekdays. It serves as both an escape from reality and a utopia of a secure location and a secure environment to possess.