Before Molly Greene (b. 1986) began painting in 2018, she explored her questions through scholarly means, ranging from environmental and animal studies to philosophy, technology, gender/sexuality studies and posthumanism. The latter refers to the project of extending moral consideration to non-humans, and calling into question our fragile demarkations between us and all the others. In doing so, Greene challenges the binary nature of society, confusing our frantic need of categorization.
I don’t want to burden her paintings too much with words, after she has just risen above this verbal level. But one observation struck me: The portrayed vegetation has no roots. It’s an idealization divorced from the reality of the vegetative cycle of birth, growth, decay and death.
Find more on her Instagram.
I hope that I’m starting to play in that space between conventional ideas of what a human should be and what a human could be.Molly A. Greene