Anne Munnecke (DK)
Metabolism – The Rift and the Drift
06/09-10/10 2024

Metabolism - The Rift and the Drift by Anne Munnecke is an exhibition that explores nature’s own color spectrum and human connection to the cycles of nature through plant foraging, plant archiving and plant dyeing.

The exhibition features textile works, watercolor pieces, and installations. All the textiles on display are dyed with plants, the watercolors are made from plant pigments, and the installations include collected plant materials. The works repeatedly feature motifs such as the sun, the moon, plants, leaves, seeds, roots, and chronobiological phenomenas - how living organisms, adapt to solar- and lunar-related rhythms. There are also references to mythological stories of metamorphoses and transformations from human to plant.

The title of the exhibition refers to the eco-socialist concept of "The Metabolic Rift". The idea behind the concept is that humans and nature share a natural metabolism, which has been disrupted by profit-driven economy where exploitation of resources has created a rift or alienation between humanity and nature.

Anne Munnecke’s work with dye plants—from foraging in the wild or in urban parks to pre-sprouting seeds on the windowsills of her Copenhagen apartment, to color development in the dye baths, mordanting textiles, filtering pigments, and the final creation of the works - is all part of a strategy to get closer to nature and feel a stronger connection to it through tangible work.

Therefore, the exhibition is both an exploration of the aesthetic and poetic potential of plant dyes and a proposal on how working with nature’s own colors can help restore a lost balance.



Anne Munnecke (b. 1981) graduated from the Funen Art Academy, Odense and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2006-2012). She works with colors as an aesthetic sensory form, but also as a cultural, scientific, chemical, and spiritual phenomenon.

She collects plants and other organic and mineral materials for pigment production and textile dyeing. She is interested in how actions, investigations, and craftsmanship can bring one closer to nature’s cycles, in the hope of restoring a lost balance.

Her practice is rooted in a feminist craft tradition and foraging customs, where meticulous, detailed, and investigative work is an essential part of the finished piece.

She has exhibited at: Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro, Brandts Klædefabrik, Den FrieUdstillingsbygning, Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Kunstpakhuset Ikast, c4 projects, Fyns Kunstmuseum, Eks-rummet, and Vandrehallen Hillerød.


The exhibition Metabolism - The Rift and the Drift by Anne Munnecke is produced with Galleri CC, and supported by Malmö Stad and the Kulturrådet.





Photo: Johan Lundin