Name: I am vertical (but I would rather be horizontal)
Start: 2025-07-01
End: 2025-09-21
Location: iMAL

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

On the occasion of iMAL's 25th anniversary this ‘introspective’ remembers and reflects while looking forward, longing for more horizontal and harmonic models, as Plath does in her eponymous poem. The artworks explore the possibilities of digital creation not seeking to scale at the expense of planetary boundaries.

The poem

I am vertical,

But I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them—

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

I AM VERTICAL (BUT I WOULD RATHER BE HORIZONTAL)

-Sylvia Plath, 1961

Credits

Header picture from Refonte by Collectif Dardex.