exhibition

SomoS Arts presents One should plant trees, a solo exhibition by Lara Salmon at Artbug Gallery as part of the B-LA Connect. Salmon was an artist-in-resident at SomoS in 2018 at which time she presented a performance and solo exhibition in their Berlin space. She returned to SomoS the following year for an exhibition with collaborator Regina Mamou.

One should plant trees is comprised of the performance film Apliki Cu and a six-day durational performance by the artist in the gallery. A zine publication designed by Vanessa Dahbour accompanies the exhibition.

Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean Sea known for copper. Under the direction of Salmon’s great-grandfather, a U.S. company titled the Cyprus Mines Corporation began operations in Cyprus 100 years ago. This was the start of modern mining on the island, an industry that brought prosperity to its economy at the expense of workers’ health and toxic devastation to the land. In 2021 Salmon returned to Cyprus to research minerology, mining history, and archaeology on the island in order to understand her family’s role in this past. Her mother, Niki Salmon, joined her in November to film the performance Apliki Cu at an abandoned copper mine. Their actions embody generational sorrow as mother and daughter acknowledge inherited implication in the land’s destruction. This exhibition marks the first screening of Apliki Cu.

Salmon’s durational performance in the gallery takes cue from the phrase: to rehabilitate the land of open-cast mines one should plant trees. Trees have natural detoxifying properties that, over decades, can rebalance acidic earth. With delicate determination she attaches herself to a tree for the exhibition’s open hours. Her objective is to learn arboreal sensibility, and, with this, return to the mining ecosphere of Cyprus. The piece calls to a need for atonement, in this situation and many others. At the same time, it marks the futility of a single woman’s action.