shot#4 EINFRIEDUNG Finja Sander

We are pleased to announce the fourth edition of SHOTS at galerie burster Berlin – SHOT# is a series of short exhibitions providing a platform for experimental formats. Withered houseplants as a symbol of everyday failure in one's own four walls. Thus we look down sadly on the plants we have just purchased, when they wither away days later, whether due to lack of time or lack of care. Finja Sander (b. 1996 in Hildesheim, Germany, based in Berlin) addresses this trivial occurrence in her new work cycle EINFRIEDUNG. During the week-long performance, Sander cleans, prepares, and cares for numerous dried-up plants that she has previously collected from various Berlin households. They are finally laid out and archived in a laboratory she has designed. Three large-format photographic works show selected specimens, bedded on deep blue velour. A dynamic co-authorship emerges from the collection of multiple species, each with its own biographical traits of its previous owners. And with it a collectively shaped image that is oriented towards the basic motif of vanitas and, as it were, works off it. Finja Sander provokes an idealization, almost a fetishization of failure. In doing so, she disturbs the eternal cycle of thoughtless and therefore often frustrating consumption for its own sake. Sander chooses the medium of performance as a recurring constant in her work. Her site-specific installations serve as a resonating space that locates and contextualizes the performative action.Her engagement with archaic materials, rugged, resistant objects, and religiously connoted gestures and rituals opens her up to a wide spectrum of different, cultural-historical narratives and traditions. This has resulted in over 32 performative works to date, which relate to each other to varying degrees and continually influence each other. Her performances have been shown at C/O Berlin (2019), Museum für Fotografie, Berlin (2021), and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021), among others.