The montage, the rhythm between images, sounds, and stories, is at the heart of Theo Eshetu’s aesthetic research. An experiment that shows how the technical image manifests itself in time, whether it is manipulated, inverted, fragmented, repeated, mirrored, orchestrated, or, in this case, spiralled. Eshetu is a key figure in a scene once known as video art, a trajectory that takes us back to the 1980s when the artist photographed the music scene and experimented with art that uses multiple monitors. The works Eshetu created—stacking monitors until they became a wall, arranging them in diagonals, or suspending them from the ceiling of a museum—make the artist a manipulator of audiovisual language as a cultural system of meanings. Eshetu’s technocultural reflection for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo departs from the nature of plant life. Not so much as a garden that manages nature for human appreciation, but rather as a philosophical environment prior to human intervention, which establishes situations of coexistence between nature, life, and humanity. Images of flowers, plants, biomes, and ecosystems become kaleidoscopic music videos about the nature of humanity. And as such, an effort is not made in silence; the sound component of Eshetu’s garden is equally important. A soundtrack that surrounds and envelops the work is poetically composed by mixing the voices of figures like Maya Angelou and others who have reflected on resilience, the strength of humanity, and the consciousness of plants.

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION:

The Garden—Ode to Courage (2025), video installation,10 58″. Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Thumm. Commissioned by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo for the 36th Bienal, adapted for Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)