With love, Silybum marianum

Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) exists at the intersection of orders—a plant prized in herbal medicine, carrier of religious symbolism, and a "weed" spreading across roadsides and wastelands. The milky-white streaks on its leaves, said by legend to have formed from drops of the Virgin Mary's breast milk, weave together botany, folklore, and faith. 

The exhibition "With love, Silybum marianum" treats the plant as a figure of what resists clear classification. Its starting point is the notion of the weed, understood not as a botanical category but a cultural one — a way of ordering the world according to criteria of usefulness. The exhibition title, styled as the closing of a letter, reverses the usual direction of address: rather than a human speaking to a plant, it is the plant that appears to speak to us. This is not an act of anthropomorphisation but an invitation to imagine Silybum marianum as a participant in, and co-producer of, shared histories and meanings, in line with Donna Haraway's notion of sympoiesis.

The exhibiting artists explore margins and forms of knowledge that elude dominant systems of order.