Anna Zilahi: Urtica

The third chapter of the WINDOW series presents Anna Zilahi’s video Urtica (2022). The work explores the dual nature of the stinging nettle and reflects on pain, vulnerability, care, and resilience, while challenging the binary ways in which we perceive and relate to the natural world.

On view: 26 August – 27 September

Anna Zilahi’s video Urtica was made for her solo show at Liget Gallery (2024), where she explored Jacques Derrida’s concept of the pharmakon. According to the philosopher, this term signifies something which is both a remedy and a poison. Zilahi realized that the stinging nettle (Urtica) is such a plant: it embodies duality, ambiguity and tension. When it stings us, it hurts, and we learn from our early childhood that we should avoid the nettle. However, the plant also has important medicinal qualities: it’s good for reducing inflammation, easing joint pain, and providing rich vitamins and minerals. How can we get past the pain? Can we see it as something essential, not something to be avoided? Could this result in a more harmonious way of relating to nature and our surroundings? By highlighting the nettle’s dual nature, the artist challenges the binary way we perceive our environment as containing plants, trees, and flowers that are either helpful or destructive.

In the video we can observe a performative process: first the artist is collecting the plant – its leaves –, then she starts to sew a costume made out of nettle. She is engaging with the plant through slow, ritualistic movements, while the task seems almost sisyphusian – will it ever be possible to finish this dress? What is the role of it, who will wear it? Zilahi appears as the custodian of the nettle, becoming one with the plant through the act of sewing – her gentle gestures suggest that while making something “useful” from the leaves, she is also taking care of the nettle. Reparation comes from both directions: the artist, who appears naked, is in a vulnerable position, but so is the nettle; that is why Zilahi emphasizes the careful strategy of creating the costume without destroying the leaves themselves.

The film’s loose narrative resembles a fairytale, and this is no coincidence: Anna Zilahi was inspired by a story by Hans Christian Andersen titled The Wild Swans. In this tale, the only way the princess can save her eleven brothers turned into swans is to make them an armor plate from nettle. But during the process she must endure the stinging pain caused by the plant: if she makes a sound or speaks, both she and the brothers will die. Luckily, the fairytale ends happily – a surprise from Andersen – and after several trials the brothers are turned back to humans and the princess can stop her endless and torturing work. According to Zilahi, the nettle shirt liberates the swans, turning them back to humans, like Circe’s lions in the Odyssey. But this liberation can come only through enduring and understanding pain. In the video, where she herself takes on the role of the lonely princess, the artist highlights the importance of vulnerability and resilience.

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Camera: Gergely Offner
Editing: Eszter Králl

Anna Zilahi: Urtica, 2022. Single-channel video, color, sound, 6:20 min.

Realized within the framework of the Umwelt Art & Science Summer Academy 2022 in Kisapáti, Hungary.

The work was also presented as an exhibition at KODA House, Governors Island, New York City, from 30 October to 12 November 2023, within the framework of Residency Unlimited.