Who or what is being commemorated here with votive offerings? Nature that once was and is being more and more suppressed today? Where is the miraculous emergency rescue that a votive offering commonly celebrates? The pavilion in the garden - affectionately called a dacha by the von Meiss family - combines two historical models: the picturesque English landscape garden and the private weekend house from the Baltic-Slavic culture. Both once promised relaxation as well as refuge in romanticized nature. Here, however, the longing for originality does not remain a nostalgic indulgence in past times; on the contrary, it points to a new future worth living in. The flowers are artificial through and through, do not fade and can be memory, memorial and new beginning at the same time.
The installation Freestanding Votive Flowers (I-VII) by Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė is complemented by a video screening and incorporates further aspects of their artistic work. In Mouthless Part II (Retrograde Sequence), which can be seen during a screening in August, the aesthetics of landscape painting come into play - this time as morphing GAN animation, the algorithmic process behind Deep Fakes - with landscapes slowly flowing into each other and constantly changing. Images of transience and transformative power are juxtaposed with man-made and one-dimensional categories of "nature" and "culture".