An Interview by Karla Cloete for Artshelp, August 2022
https://www.artshelp.com/evalie-wagner/

Bringing together 25 artists from around the world, Points of Return is the latest project initiated by A La Luz, an artistic venture co-founded by environmental artists David Cass and Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero that aims to provide a platform "for sustainable and environmentally focused creative works."; February 2021

Interview for Questions and Architecture, hosted by DMAA - Delugan Meissl
Text: Evalie Wagner, Sparringspartner: Matthias K. Heschl , May 2021
Topic: The Nature of Everything

https://and.dmaa.at/plantopia

Que será, será...
Interview for Horst und Edeltraut, January 2021
http://horstundedeltraut.com/que-sera-sera/

Naturphilia: Balancing Artificiality and Nature
Schloss Hollenegg for Design x mischer´traxler studio - Vienna Design Week
TL Mag - True Living of Art & Design, 2020

https://tlmagazine.com/naturphilia-balancing-between-artificiality-and-nature

Poetischer Avantgarden im Botanischen Garten der Universität Wien
Über Land Blog, 2020

https://www.ueber-land.eu/poetischer-avantgarden-im-botanischen-garten/#more-7466

This 12th-Century Austrian Castle Is Embracing Its Wild Surroundings 
Walden Exhibiton, Schloss Hollenegg for Design, 2020

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/this-12th-century-austrian-castle-is-embracing-its-wild-surroundings?fbclid=IwAR3VgNxbetv3JJOkOVf1SQ5QpNdCa-ux8fyDOEnxR69QvRHYi2gWKLIRBf4

VDF x Schloss Hollenegg for Design, 2020
curated by Alice Stori Liechtenstein

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/05/09/walden-schloss-hollenegg-design-exhibition-vdf/

Schloss Hollenegg for Design, 2020
curated by Alice Stori Liechtenstein
Adorno, 2020

https://adorno.design/walden/

 Follow the artist Evalie Wagner on her stroll through Palermo´s Manifesta Biennial
Smartvolta, 2018

Giro di Giardini

Text by Evalie Wagner
Photos by Sebastian Pessenlehner

Palermo, a city full of contradictions, was my third destination in my Giro di giardini in Italy this year. During my artist in residency stay in Paliano located in the South of Roma, I was astonished by the wild meadows - poppy, wild lentil, wild roses flourished abundantly in May.
Then I went further down South, passed Napoli, and discovered a 2000 years old wall painting depicting a hauntingly beautiful garden in the ruins of Pompeii. More than ever I realized that plants have inspired aesthetics throughout history. 
Finally, I reached Palermo, which feels for me like a peculiarly overgrown garden, a bit run down, but nowhere else than here, exactly here, in this fragmented, imperfect, decayed realm can dreams and thoughts flourish, can utopia be invented.

There is no better way to explore this diversity than by straying through the city and its markets. Here one of the main qualities of the Manifesta comes into play – it not only invites to official venues, but being spread out over the city, I wandered around and eventually discovered Palermo’s hidden corners. 

Flowers and plants have never been strangers to art. Throughout history botany was used as a metaphor to cultivate impressions, depict cultural influences and explore questions of society and aesthetics. The Manifesta 12 “Planetary Garden, Cultivating Coexistence” in Palermo stays in this tradition and intertwined the topic in an enchanting way with the realities of the hosting place. 

Even if plants are the protagonists of the Biennial, their narratives reach beyond the botanical and tell the story of a city with a turbulent and rich cultural past and present.

Apparently an old painting with a green view over the city had inspired the curatorial team around Hedwig Fijen for this year’s Manifesta, centered around the botanical garden. Palermo’s orto botanico was founded in 1789 as a laboratory to study, text, mix and integrate foreign botanical species.
Throughout centuries, seeds of plants and trees from all over the world were brought to Palermo to find a new habitat there. A perfect court to host Leone Contini´s art project Foreign Farmer, 2018. It is rooted in Italy’s agricultural past and present, investigating rural activities carried out by different migrant communities in order to fulfill their nutritional needs. 

The “Theatre of the Sun” from the Fallen Fruit Collective integrates a map of fruit-bearing trees into an eye-catching wallpaper at the Palazzo Butera, and merges it into a colourful experience.
Another example of a stunning space, which is still waiting for his magic kiss, as perfect match for an impressive artwork is Patricia Kaersenhout‘s The Soul of Salt (2016): a mound of salt, surrounded by the peeling arabesques of the Palazzo Forcella De Seta. The installation refers to a Caribbean slave legend according to which enslaved people by refraining from eating salt would become light enough to fly back to Africa. And yet again the ephemeral stucco is a “memento mori”.

With the omnipresent sea, visible yet and again from windows in different places, it is no wonder that several video works reflect on the boundaries of freedom. Sicily as an exposed island is one Europe’s hotspots with regard to migration and is governed by the unconventional mayor Orlando, who is as resistive as his city, standing up for the rights of refugees in turbulent times.

About the austrian Artist Evalie Wagner:
It is the simple magic of the eternal and the ephemeral that catches my attention in botany. Since I am a child I stepped into my mum’s garden, and before i started my artistic career I thought of becoming a florist.
But things turned out differently and I studied art and became an artist. Recently, I am getting back to my roots and watch myself as flowers are conquering my artistic life. Along with painting them in meticulous portraits, I also started creating site-specific installations with botanical elements. I describe my art as visual metaphors, situated between the conceptual and the poetic. Call me an avant-gardener.



https://smartvolta.com/inspiration/follow-the-artist-evalie-wagner-on-her-strawl-through-palermos-manifesta-biennial/

Pick me. Flower Installation - VIU Eyewear Store Opening Vienna
February 2018

http://de.fashionnetwork.com/news/Viu-setzt-Expansion-in-Osterreich-fort,951744.html#utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

Bilder wie Gedichte
September 2018

https://www.elisabeth-bernhofer.at/stories/?tag=Evalie+Wagner

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