Dormance

Dormance is a drawing and video-performance project that explores the performative potential of horticultural and plant protective behaviours during the winter. This research established a close link between a plant’s dormant period, depression, and artistic regeneration. The slowness of winter, the careful observation of the landscape, and the resilient nature of snow-covered plants invites us to reconsider our cycles of productivity.

Rose de la Riva follows the development of the plants’ rest and recovery periods, documenting the various protective modes of plants from the Centre de la Nature de Laval. While their usual spectacular display is on hold, the plants preserve their energy under a thick blanket of snow that acts as an ephemeral shelter. Under the weight of this vast duvet, they are forced to rest.

Suggesting an interior transformation, the layer of snow and the plants’ protective movements become the visual patterns that evoke not only waiting, stagnation, torpor, but also recuperation, healing, and renewal. This emotional and conceptual association with plants requires artistic regeneration, benevolence, care, and substituting performative spontaneity with performative substantiality.

The aesthetic and emotional value of plants, the care we take in preparing them for the cold, and their natural resilience, form the basis for a body of image-based works that have led to the development of a performative language. The physicality of burial, horizontality, and the fold.