I Nuovi Arrivati Ariane Müller/ Verena Kathrein at Istituto Svizzero di Roma, 2016, Kiss and Go
I Nuovi Arrivati / Just Arrived consists of five very common plants, that are bought at local markets, and are part of the urban landscape, but are in themselves not autochtone plants from the region. They are exhibited in a form of family positioning, closely placed next to each other, but all in their own flower pots, halfway burried in the soil.
In their installation 2016 at the Swiss Institute in Rome, they may link to the many new people who had come to Italy as migrants and asylum seekers, and meanwhile they by no means are different from people who already live there, are different by their arrival status. The plants had been in reality looking for a safe place to continue living, after their home (at the Austrian Institute) had to be abandoned.
The urgency to find a place, and the solution to turn them into an art installation, and hence give them the possibility to be smuggled into the gardens of the institute (of which the garden is under cultural heritage protection) shows the creativity and possibility of changing identities, and constructing stories when in need. It also hints at the autonomy of art.
At the exhibition Kiss and Go, at the Swiss Institute in Rome the plants were anthropomorphized, giving them their proper identfication picture, to make them become individualities, and placing them, via the title, in the context of the current asylum debate.