In Plantwoman, the female body merges with the vegetal world. The work explores vulnerability, surrender, sensuality, and the body’s connection to the living world.
In Plantwoman, Fleur van den Berg brings together the female body and the plant world in a single, vulnerable form. The sculpture shows an incomplete female torso: headless, partly without legs, suspended backwards in soft pink bands. From the body, liana-like forms extend, suggesting arms. At their ends hang glass “leaf palms”. These hand-like leaves without fingers shift between green and orange depending on the light.
The work appears both bodily and plant-like, sensual and fragile, exposed and transformed. Its translucent pink-green skin allows light to pass through the surface, while vein-like traces seem to run across and within the body. The figure appears alive, or in the process of becoming part of another living system.
The fusion of woman and plant becomes a metaphor for the continuity between human life and nature. The suspended posture holds an ambiguity between surrender and despair, while the luminous surface and tactile material presence invite the viewer’s gaze. This tension between attraction and vulnerability is central to the work.
Made through Van den Berg’s distinctive process combining PET, textiles, composite materials, wax, and glass, Plantwoman brings together material sensitivity, translucency, and ecological metaphor. As both figure and organism, the work situates the body between the personal, the relational, and the ecological.
