Adrien Missika (born 1981 in Paris/France) lives and works in Berlin. In a humorous way he questions the dichotomy of nature and culture, with the artist’s conceptual approach drifting towards poetic and hypothetical narratives.

Missika uses a variety of media, from video and photography to sculpture, installation and action, drawing from the broad spectrum of natural and environmental sciences. By trying to overcome the logic of capitalism, Adrien Missika’s artistic practice creates a space for possible worlds.

More about Adrien

Adrien Missika uses instructions as the basis for performances he has implemented in urban spaces, such as Mexico City, Lisbon and Berlin. In a new instruction, which he formulated as part of ‘(re)connecting.earth’, he asks people to name a tree in their neighbourhood. At the beginning of the exhibition, he calls on the audience to take to the streets with a watering can and look for thirsty weed: an action that is being carried out collectively for the first time and whose initial gesture can be seen in a video at the Stadtgalerie Kiel.

In the same video, three short films follow that take up this narrative and continuation of instructions. In ‘Pioneer’s Treat’ (2020), the instruction tells us to fill a bucket with compost and then take it to the streets to fertilise all the weeds. For ‘TransPlants’ (2024), the artist bought 16 plants of 15 different species to free them from flower market captivity and the pots that enclosed their roots. This rescue operation required a certain amount of movement: the artist transported the plants through the hectic traffic of an Asian metropolis on a minimalist electric tricycle. In ‘Cura’, the artist himself can be seen offering a ‘spa treatment’ to plants that fill the lost spaces in the Mexican megacity.