Wasps
Albena Baeva
Instructions: Click on [mixed reality] or [augmented reality] and check what works best on your device.
Power Flower
Curators: Albena Baeva and Elizabeth Thallauer
Open Air Gallery, Fürth
From 28 July through 27 September, 2026
The Botania modification of the popular Minecraft game, introduces Magical Flowers that can be arranged to form what is called a Power Flower. The arrangements generate untold amounts of a special kind of magic power that fuels everything in the game, from powering tools and performing tasks, to the game's alchemical transformation of crafting Terrasteel.
The exhibition Power Flower augments historical landmarks in the city of Fürth with virtual sculptures that, through their juxtaposition with the physical world, generates its own power to provoke thoughts about identity, equality, and ecology.
The augmented reality sculptures in Power Flower modify, extend and enter into dialogue with the landmarks that surround them, often challenging their permanence and monumentality. The works resist commemorating historical achievements, but engage in active dialogue on issues that are central to our lives today.
The Fürth Intercultural Garden is an oasis of biological and cultural diversity in the heart of the city. The sculpture I Am From There When I Am Here, by Bulgarian-Turkish artist Melih Nehat celebrates the cultural diversity and shared experiences that binds the community around the garden. The work also reminds us that being human exists only in the acceptance of our diverse experiences and that we each carry countless influences from other people and other places. It is this colourful collection of influences that makes each of us uniquely who we are.
I Am From There When I Am Here reminds us to resist isolation, cultural separatism, ecological apathy that are pushed upon us by the false constructs of nationalism and ethnicity.
A different relation to its environment is formed by the three mythical figures in the sculpture Wasps by Albena Baeva. Situated across from the Centaurenbrunnen fountain by German artist Rudolf Maison, Wasps challenges the narrative of mankind's superiority over nature's forces that Maison celebrates.
Wasps is part of a series of works in which Baeva reclaims words that have traditionally been used to dismiss, belittle or insult women, like pussies, cows, pigs, sheep, and bitches. In this series, she remodels and combines 3D sculptures of animals and women found online to infuse these sexist terms with new power.
The figures in Wasps are striking and bold. They are the superheroines that have come to assist mankind to avert a disaster of our own making, one in which women and children are the first victims, but where our urge to conquer the forces of nature is now the driving force behind the largest mass extinction event the world has seen since the ice age, and in which nonhuman actors have no chance of survival.
Wasps is a damning condemnation of the Centaurenbrunnen's naivety and short-sightedness.
The third and final work in Power Flower can be found in the Botanical School Garden in the Fürth City Park. Built at the beginning of the 20th century, the Botanical School Garden was designed as an outdoor classroom for the city’s students and locals to study regional flora and exotic trees.
Floral Crown by Elizabeth Thallauer pays tribute to plants that have become extinct in Germany. The work focuses on plants that have developed unique evolutionary adaptations and have become extinct as a result of changes in agricultural practices. Every plant in Floral Crown had its unique role in maintaining ecological equilibrium and biodiversity.
Floral Crown reminds us of what was lost and makes our destructive impact on the world around us palpable.
The works in Power Flower are not historical landmarks that celebrate achievements, but rather fountains of mythical power that fuel dynamic and often conflicted public conversations about who we were, who we are, and who we want to become.
Power Flower is curated by Albena Baeva (Gallery Gallery) and Elizabeth Thallauer and is part of Fürth Open Air Gallery 2026 initiative. The Open Air Gallery is an event organized by Kulturring C in cooperation with the City of Fürth’s Cultural Affairs Office and SENF.xyz.
Remodeled 3D models by Mossi Female Figure by Connections XR Wasp by mod3ler License: CC Attribution-ShareAlike