Palm Attacks: A few invasive species



Solo show
 Fondazione Sandretto︎
 Turin
2017



Palm Attacks: a few invasive species is the exhibition which Ghita Skali designed for the space of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. The artist presents new works combined into a one-off installation. Starting from a new kind of sub-tropical landscape, the artist’s research focuses on the recent use of artificial palm trees within the urban fabric, and its aesthetic and social implications. Today these plants, which are the product of advanced technological processes, provide the most modern camouflage system for communication devices, becoming a paradigm for strategies aimed at integrating the natural and urban landscapes.

Ghita Skali gives us a picture of Morocco as the privileged testing ground of an engineering effort to alter landscape morphology, motivated by financial speculation. Changes in the public space are examined in relation to their effects on the collective unconscious, as they pass off as new, undisputed achievements in the ‘modern’ heritage of a nation.

Making this framework situation even more paradoxical is a reference to the Moroccan Authenticity and Modernity Party, which the artist includes among the themes of her installation, and which has very close ties to some of the biggest camouflage firms. The palm tree, an international symbol for the exotic, is completely recast as a new expression of the globalized world.

Palm Attacks: a few invasive species is organized as a possible showroom for an almost propaganda-like display of these new aesthetic objects. The exhibition includes a few sculptural items which allude to the current artificial production of Phoenix Dactylifera, the common date palm, along with video works. In the videos, a guided visit recorded by a tourist, and an interview with an economist, become fictional devices chosen by the artist to reflect on the social effects generated by the new landscape. The videos also contain sequences of images and sounds found on the Internet, which were integrated in to the videos as a contextualization device. The showroom of Palm Attacks echoes with the sound of a female, grotesque voiceover, the only jarring note in the installation: a modern Cassandra announces that the new palm trees will bring misfortune and catastrophes.
As an addition to the exhibition, Skali opened “Palm_attacks”, an Instagram account where she collects images of artificial palms sent by users on her request. The mapping revealed the impossibility to reconstruct a single, shared meaning among the communities involved in this change of landscape.



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Photos: Giorgio Perottino

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Actors: Abdelghani Bouzian, Eric Valentin, Eva Taris, Anas Bakohi, Mabil Dourgal, Fati Hejiuiy and Voktorie Knotkova.
Assistant: Zoë Grant
Curator: Lorenzo Balbi
Assistant Curator: Bernardo Follini
Sound Editing: Rémi Riault