When I arrived in France, I stayed at an artistic community near Toulouse called Terre Blanque, which has existed for more than 35 years and is filled with sculptures, paintings, and the most diverse artistic manifestations left behind by the hundreds of artists who have passed through the community. Among all these wonderful works, one caught my attention: a line of colorful lights blinking joyfully inside shotgun cartridges. This piece particularly held my attention because of the conceptual paradox generated by the deterritorialization of the violence of weapons and its reframing into the joy of blinking, multicolored lights.

That was my very first contact, an artistic awakening to the inspiring work of Annlor Codina, a French contemporary artist whose originality shows through a singular artistic approach. This approach focuses on the exploration and critical deconstruction of the many manifestations of violence, whether tangible in objects of war or insidious in mechanisms of security control. Her artistic practice feeds on these elements, in a kind of artistic pollyannaism that skillfully digests them into poetic strategies that transcend their original function. The resulting works are not confined to being aesthetic creations; they stand as catalysts for questioning and reaction, stimulating debate on the normalization of the repressive methods used by the apparatus of state terrorism, in order to sharpen our vigilance against the ongoing restriction of our freedoms.

Beyond this intriguing facet, another striking characteristic emanates from her work: by introducing random elements, she aspires to grant a wider freedom to her art, abandoning any claim to control the final result. It is precisely within this quest for unpredictability that a new phase of her work is taking shape. The artist is gradually guiding her work toward a deep exploration of the power inherent in nature, of its remarkable capacity for resilience, and of the unsuspected strength of plants and fungi. By examining the influence of plants on the creative act, she grasps the common and uncertain thread shared between the plant kingdom and human communities, readjusting the foundations of this relationship so that we might become the conscious, committed allies of these verdant beings.

In this emerging recognition of an intrinsic harmony between humankind and nature, the artist opens a window onto a collective ecological consciousness. She reorients our perspective so that we no longer merely contemplate the beauty and power of plants, but invest ourselves as partners—us responsible for the preservation of these plant entities, and them responsible for our preservation.

This new form of relationship with plants represents an artistic manifestation rooted in a broader philosophical movement, which calls for a brief initial clarification here.

The dominant Western tradition has long regarded nature as a resource to be exploited and stripped of its riches. The first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Bible establishes man’s dominion over all living things. This damned worldview, alas still prevailing, has exploited us right up to the era of contemporary environmental crises.

Under the yoke of the global climate catastrophe brought on by the Anthropocene, we are today confronted with the apotheosis of the effects of hubris born of human exceptionalism—a violent sentiment inspired by pride and arrogance, manifesting itself in colonialism, capitalism, racism, and sexism. Even within this scenario, humans persist in asserting their independence from nature, positioning themselves as the sole species capable of altering the planetary balance. In doing so, we forget that we are not the only forces capable of changing the atmosphere. More powerful than the largest industrial factories, communities of photosynthetic plants reorganize elements on a global scale. It was they who changed the composition of the atmosphere, making the planet breathable for everyone.

Ecology, in its quintessence, presents itself as the holistic science of the biosphere. It encompasses the complex, interconnected whole of living organisms and their intricate networks of symbiotic interactions. It delves into the intimate, interdependent relationships between living beings and their environment, revealing a web of life woven with subtlety and complexity.

Many so-called ecological analyses draw our attention to the harmful effects on the future of our planet of the actions of a self-absorbed humanity. However, a good many of these approaches remain fixed on statistical and utilitarian calculations, oriented solely toward the needs of the great accumulators of wealth, the agents of planetary destruction. Rather than confining itself within today’s neoliberal terrors, alliance with green beings is an invitation to root ourselves in a way of life that proposes the creation of other worlds—habitable, breathable, and nourishing. This is why we advocate for collaboration with plants, a co-inspiration, a shared breath with these world-creators, in a struggle against the atmospheric consequences of the Anthropocene.

Drawing on the wisdom of the projects of radical solidarity woven by plants with their pollinators, their interactions with fungi, and their animal allies, plants can embody this otherness with which we should choose to connect in order to transcend our anthropocentric position. It is precisely in this light that we can understand the new interactions with the plant world found in Annlor Codina’s works: considering plants as sentient beings deserving to be our interlocutors. Their forms nourish her aesthetic and stimulate her imagination.

To illustrate these artistic shifts, we can mention four of the artist’s recent works.

The series Stigmata #1, made in 2016, presents sculptures in which cartridge casings are screwed onto partly charred tree branches. It draws its form from landscapes devastated by the violence of war, where the shiny cartridge casings cover much of the bark to the point of replacing it. This work already showed an interplay between the themes of violence and its effects on non-human living beings, highlighting trees as victims of armed conflict and seeking to question the mutagenic effects of conflict on the environment.

In the work Polyporus Tumultus, from 2019, the artist explores the aesthetic possibilities of the tinder fungus, a bracket fungus that attaches itself to weak or wounded trees and eventually kills its host. As they decompose, these fungi contribute to the formation of compost and fertilize the soil. Beyond this traditional use, Annlor Codina reinterprets these fungi as the symbol of a revolt of nature seeking to reclaim the territories that were usurped from it. The fungi emerge from within the columns of red brick that support several buildings, awakening in us the hope that these constructions themselves, as they decompose, might one day fertilize the soil.

Another significant example is her project A[r]BOR[e]TUM, a greenhouse where seedlings, cuttings, and plants capable of inducing abortion are grown. The initiative aims to break with the dominance of the interests of powerful pharmaceutical industry groups by reconnecting with knowledge inherited from ancestral traditions from different parts of the world. It represents a tactic of resistance against the intellectual capture of living elements, allowing the free reproduction of the greenhouse, the books, and the seeds by anyone interested. This project asserts itself as a response against patriarchal domination, which seeks to prune away freedom of choice, and invites us to take control of our bodies in alliance with plants we can use medicinally.

Currently, the ongoing project developed by Annlor Codina is called LINE. It is a collaboration with Nawras Shalhoub, combining both coordination among several artists and the creation of individual work integrated within the project’s framework. LINE establishes a collaboration between six artists from the Gaza Strip and six artists from the Toulouse region, seeking through this cooperation to move beyond borders, to break the blockade imposed by the Zionist occupation, and to facilitate the circulation of Gazan art and artists throughout Europe.

In her own research within the project, Annlor studies the harm inflicted by the war in Gaza on local flora. Israel has bombarded Gaza with tons of weapons through air, naval, and ground strikes, including flechette shells, white phosphorus, dense metal explosives, and depleted uranium. Residues from these weapons, containing numerous heavy, toxic, and carcinogenic metals, have been found even in the hair of children born in Gaza. Areas targeted by rockets or artillery have suffered degradation that has left the soil infertile and caused great losses in floral and faunal diversity. Her project sets out to capitalize on plants’ remarkable ability to metabolize various soil constituents, coupled with the unambiguous detection of heavy metal accumulation in plant tissue. This initiative aims to explore possible changes in pigments caused by the absorption of these metals. This goal will be achieved through a comparative analysis of the alterations in the natural dye constituents present in plant species existing both in the Gaza region and in France—thereby giving plants a voice to tell their own experiences of war.

The evolution of Annlor Codina’s artistic work reveals an emerging trend, marked by a growing representation of the plant kingdom within her creations. Verdant beings no longer merely play the role of artistic objects; they now take on more complex roles as narrative subjects, expressing their own stories within the artistic compositions in an increasingly autonomous way. This gradual shift lends a new dimension to the artist’s work, positioning her as a mediator or translator between the intrinsic language of plants and a singular artistic aesthetic. This complex artistic evolution raises questions about the relationship between art, nature, and plants’ capacity to communicate their own essence within an aesthetic framework.

Through her artistic creation, deeply engaged with plant life and the exploration of the power of plants, Annlor Codina embarks on a project of otherness. This approach challenges our anthropocentric stance by proposing an alternative that leads us to the frontiers of language and of our perception of the world.

Indeed, she seeks, in her own words, « to conspire with the plants, against liberty-killing systems, » in order to create a new art that recognizes the vitality and sensitivity of the more-than-human world around us, and that develops new artistic forms of relationship with plants, the planet, and ourselves. Thus emerges a promising vision of harmony and lasting coexistence between humankind and the plant world, shaped by the art and artistic sensibility of Annlor Codina.

Annlor and the Plants – Rodrigo Pennesi, December 2023.