Forschung
ABOLITION GARDEN
muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi
In collaboration with Hannah Baader, Costanza Caraffa, Dorit Malz, Gerhard Wolf and KHI’s Garden Commission, and curated by Angelika Stepken and Tina Plokarz
April 2024 to November 2026
Garden of Palazzo Capponi-Incontri
© Bärbel Reinhard
Abolition Garden is a growing garden, a living anti-monument, and an artistic research project by Brazilian artist muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi. Planted in spring 2024 in the garden of KHI’s Palazzo Capponi-Incontri, the installation is dedicated to Black radical thought and resistance stories throughout the process of the abolition of slavery in Brazil (legally ended in 1888). Abolition Garden marks an important step in the artist’s creative practice: Instead of incorporating colonial wounds and scars into, and subverting them through, her own black female body, Mattiuzzi poetically translates her performative gesture towards the visualization of resistance in a set of tangible formations.
Mattiuzzi’s garden installation of medicinal herbs and flowering plants (among others mint, basil, and rue which are also commonly used in the Mediterranean region) is guarded by three metal figurines and by a repelling-looking trident arranged in a triangular shape. The ensemble of highly symbolic objects and plants points to the sinister history of slavery and the aftermath of abolition in Brazil, to the migration of plants and people between Africa, South America and Europe, as well as to the metabolic relationship between herbs and microorganisms in the earth. Valuing plants both as spiritual objects and as intangible elements of resistance, Abolition Garden reveals the significance of popular epistemology in preserving culture and writing history. The garden installation becomes a metaphorical seeding ground for performing resistance and a remedy for combating racism today.
The Abolition Garden will be accompanied by a series of events and conversations, considering ongoing research on historical gardens and monuments, indigenous healing practices and commemoration, ecology, decolonization initiatives in the archives, as well as debates in contemporary performance art, and Black radical thinking.
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The art installation is part of the institute’s ongoing engagement with artistic research and contemporary artists. In collaboration with the Villa Romana in Florence, the Kunsthistorisches Institut initiated a cross-media communication, in which invited artists come to Florence for several months to engage in conversations about their projects and those of the scholars of the institute. As Artist-in-Residence at Villa Romana in 2021, Mattiuzzi experimented with the design of a vegetal monument that reimagines the political scope of plants in the context of historic plantations, abolition symbols, and healing traditions in Brazil.
muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her research and artistic practice unfold in performances, writings, photography, and artistic films. Mattiuzzi has performed and participated in exhibitions and research projects, including “Love and Ethnology” 2019-2020 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Biennale of São Paulo in 2016 and 2020. In 2023 she received the Photography Award from ZUM magazine by Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil. She was artist-in-residence at the Villa Romana in 2021 as Artistic Research Fellow of the KHI, and was artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2023/24). https://www.studiomusa.art/en/
Instagram @musamattiuzzi and @studio_musa_mattiuzzi
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
muSa Mattiuzzi in front of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
muSa Mattiuzzi in front of “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of “Abolition Garden“ in July 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view of study display, accompanying “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view of study display, accompanying “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view of study display, accompanying “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Detail of study display, accompanying “Abolition Garden“ in September 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Bärbel Reinhard
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in May 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in May 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Installation view “Abolition Garden“ in May 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
muSa Mattiuzzi installing “Abolition Garden“ in March 2024, Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. © Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Garden of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44
50121 Firenze / Italien
Visits to the installation in the KHI’s garden can be arranged via email. Please write to info@khi.fi.it
