Herbarius

Ayelet Hashahar Cohen’s journey spans two eras. She assembles an underground mycelium between earth regions, between two women. Through the history of wars and life that follows, from a sulfur mine in one part of the world to a coal mine in another, through manmade concrete veins beneath dark soil and underground vegetation, flows a powerful desire to bring clarity into the darkness. With its alien crudeness, this concrete everywhere can only benefit a time when organic softness seems too vulnerable against realizing the destructive potential of the forces at our disposal.

And yet, the artist collects seeds: Seeds Inside the vault, seeds inside the book, seeds with operating instructions whose time will come, even if it is difficult to feel when it will arrive. What is placed here if not faith in one frozen seed’s ability to awaken from its deep, dark slumber, through volcanic power, through the power of the rocks’ endurance in time, through the force of imagination, through the power of the heart’s desire, through the power of a journey first made in a shamanic world of passage, and continues with one’s feet.

The exhibition envelopes the artist's book “Herbarius”. Born with a primordial belief in the earth and its movement – its ability to extract materials of life of itself, even if they cannot be seen with our eyes but only with our heart, by recruiting vision in the underground darkness to locate sources of light, molten into old rocks. It carries instructions for life, and knowledge from an ancient, unknowing world, protected beneath the soil. Waiting for a day when life will reawaken and sulfur’s inner heat, the fire of nature, will ignite. When nature disappears into quiet coldness, it’s hard to remember if there ever was anything else. In a cold, abandoned world, she sows the possibility of repair, healing, a memory of entire eras folded into a tiny seed, at the bottom of the deepest well.

-- Excerpt from the exhibition's text by Sofie Berzon MacKie