Flora Supersum

At Örum 119, we try to accept imperfection and impermanence, the beauty of transience and the small faults in art and nature. The Japanese call this wabi-sabi. And as we and the Japanese embrace wabi-sabi, so too does photographic artist Lena Granefelt.

We came to know Lena when she visited us for a couple of days in 2017. While she was with us, she captured  beautiful images of Örum 119, most of them connected to the garden. In her book project, Flora Supersum, Lena continues to photograph nature.

Swedish photographer Lena Granefelt is based in Stockholm, working on international advertising, reportage, travel and gardening assignments, and on her own artistic projects. Flora Supersum sees Lena follow in the footsteps of great botanical photographers that have come before her, elevating the art in the most hauntingly beautiful way.

Supersum is from the Latin ’to evade death’ or ’to keep living’, and so it is in Flora Supersum that Lena explores the beauty in death and the struggle for survival seen through her images of plants.

” In the world of plants, there are no national borders; no visas or residence permits are required. They grow side by side and will regrow if favourable conditions arise. All with the same desire: to evade death, to keep living.”

Moody, dark and mysterious Lena’s anthology is a portrait of the life of plants, of plants in flower, in decay, seeding and becoming reborn. Intimate and close up images of seed heads, capsules and pods, struggling through life and death and for the survival of their species.

The exhibition Flora supersum containing 46 works, will be on display at Verket – Avesta art, from mid-May until September 2022.