Botanical Bodies

View exhibited artworks:

Botanical Bodies (Coming soon)

A solo exhibition with Anne Marie Ploug

The word botanic derives from the Greek botanē: grass, pasture, fodder: All terms bound as much to grazing and husbandry as to plants themselves. Etymologically the vegetal world was defined by its relation to humans. Ancient Greeks saw plants as having feelings and early botanists described the life cycles of plants through words such as growth, disease and death. Similarly roots “bleed” sap and bearing fruits are described as a “pregnancy”. Botany is therefore not only a science of classification but has always been about the projection and analogy between bodies and plants.

In Botanical Bodies, Anne Marie Ploug examines this projection between human bodies and plants. Both materials and motifs mirror the logic of the botanical body: Her copper plates “lives and breathes”, not only metaphorically, but materially. The human body is everywhere, in her minimal photogravure-works where the surface appears to breathe: subtle shifts in tone echo the liveliness of skin, or a tongue. Motifs such as grapes and weeds are bound to the active act of printmaking: to breathing, to error, to the sensual and material processes that mark the surface. Plants remain bodies, or the bodies become plants: clusters of grapes, weeds, or stems begin to resemble gatherings of human figures.

Anne Marie Ploug

Anne Marie Ploug is above all other things a visual artist specializing in printmaking. She focuses on what is often overlooked or considered marginal and turns it into the main subject of her art. Using both traditional and experimental graphic techniques, she creates works where lines, forms, and rhythms open new ways of seeing the body, nature, and our surroundings.

Anne Marie Ploug (b. 1966, Denmark) is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited widely: namely with solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kastrupgårdsamlingen, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Møstings Hus, Gammelgaard, and Politikens Forhal, and participated in group shows at venues including Rønnebæksholm, Charlottenborg, Den Frie, and DCA Gallery, New York. She is the recipient of the Anne Marie Telmanyi born Carl-Nielsen Honorary Grant, Leo Estvad’s Grant in 2025 and was nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award in 2022, one of the world’s leading prizes for graphic art.

_
Cover image:

Anne Marie Ploug, Botanical Bodies, installation view, Photo: Malle Madsen