Aneta Bartos
Monotropa Terrain
location: 12 Wooster Street, Soho, NYC
January 20 - February 25, 2023
open: Tuesday - Saturday 11 - 6,
Aneta Bartos' Monotropa Terrain is a two-fold exploration of the deeper and darker nature of the
human mind and the functioning of its memory.
Monotropa Terrain pairs a large, projected, almost otherworldly, Super8 film, with five black and
white videos (Testimonies I-V) each presenting an individual woman describing her mysterious
encounters that question the nature of our accepted reality and explore ideas of duality and that
of supernatural.
Monotropa Terrain
Set in the dark world of the Monotropa, a plant known as 'ghost pipe' or 'Indian pipe', the
seemingly amphibious characters portrayed in Bartos' latest film seem to be in an embryonic
process of taking form, merging, or splitting, as if trying to form a hybrid, dual form of creature.
Moving through plant infested lakes and puddles of mud, the symbiotic movements of Bartos
characters remind us of the sensual and mysterious ballets often seen in early documentaries
on cell reproduction, or fungus and insect life.
The Monotropa plant is often mistaken for a fungus, due to its white, ghostly appearance. It
lacks chlorophyll, which gives plants their green color, hence it does not feed using
photosynthesis. Monotropa can grow in dark, dense forest floor covered by leaves and debris. It
creates a hybrid relationship with fungi that produces sugar by parasitizing on photosynthetic
plants. It tricks the fungi into feeding them, effectively reversing the traditional food-chain.
Shot on Super8, the film Monotropa Terrain is a continuation of Bartos' former series Spider
Monkeys I & II, a series equally showing dualistic beings, half human half animal entangled in
psychological landscapes.
Where her choice for expired Polaroid film was a deliberate choice of medium to re-create
childhood memories in the artist acclaimed photography series Family Portrait, the choice for
Super8 film as medium to shoot Monotropa Terrain again proves to be in line with the film's
subjects.
The film's blurry panning, the slowed down scenes which cause images to almost "split", the
changing in and out focus all seem to be consistent with the apparent changes its characters
are going through. (At times it feels as if watching something alive in a still developing Polaroid.)
Meanwhile the women on screen all seem to be versions of a common self, as if they are
performing different versions of the same persona.
Monotropa Terrain: Testimonies I-V
For centuries the notion of paranormal and non-physical forces have been regarded as dark and
often been hidden and this corresponds to our own dark and hidden parts of ourselves.
These 'supernatural' abduction' testimonies feel as if the characters are testifying to situations
they can no longer relate to themselves, trying to investigate the nature of their own existence
by putting themselves outside of the memory they are describing. It is as if they are trying to
describe their own hybrid co-other by distancing through a dark mirror. The testimonies
indirectly allude to childhood trauma, brainwashing, addiction and perceptions of mental illness
whilst being peppered throughout the narration with humor and abject absurdity.
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain installation view |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Monotropa Terrain, 2021 screen grab 12:51 Super8 transferred to digital |
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Aneta Bartos Triptych I, 2021 28.5 inch x 50 inch digital print |
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Aneta Bartos Triptych III, 2021 28.5 inch x 50 inch digital print |
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Aneta Bartos Testimonies I-V, 2021 33:33 digital film |
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Aneta Bartos Belisama, 2016 Archival Inkjet Print 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm Edition 1/5 +2AP |
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Aneta Bartos Blue Lagoon, 2013 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm Edition of 2/5 +2AP |
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Aneta Bartos Cephalopod, 2011 archival inkjet print 20 x 20 inches, 51 x 51 cm Edition of 2/5 +2AP |