During her stay in Gijón, the artist will produce and exhibit Act 6 of Hevea, an ongoing artistic research project that explores how natural rubber – an organic substance linked to the rise of capitalism, imperialism and modernity – embodies the ways in which humans and non-humans are intimately connected to the military-industrial complex. Through a series of acts, the installation combines moving images, sound, sculpture and text, the project makes tangible the inextricable links between people, plants, politics and power.

Taraxacum Kok-saghyz, also known as Russian dandelion, is a plant endemic to Kazakhstan that contains rubber. Hevea Act 6 traces the convoluted journey of this humble ‘weed’ – from the mountains of Tien Shan to the collective farms of the USSR, via the greenhouses of Auschwitz and the laboratories of today’s rubber multinationals – and the stories of the women associated with it.

The work will be presented as a single-channel installation of video and spatial sound that brings together footage captured over several months in multiple locations: the Botanical Garden in Berlin, the Institute of Plant Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Münster, and various sites in and around Almaty, Kazakhstan. The sound, developed in collaboration with artist Diego Florez, will be integrated into a series of sculptures resembling human-plant hybrid bodies. This sound sculpture, a mixture of voice textures and field recordings, will act as a polyphonic chorus that seeks to embody how both people and plants are caught up in and objectified by the machinations of politics, war and commerce.