Sharon Ya'ari

• 20.03.–02.05.2026

Galerie Martin Janda presents Sharon Ya'ari's fourth solo exhibition Plants I didn’t ask for, ones I did from 20th March until 2nd May 2026.

For his latest body of work, Sharon Ya'ari has been cataloguing all the plants that are growing in the yard of his house. He then systematically photographs them and develops them as analogue prints. Almost like architectural fragments, the plants appear as frozen contemporary witnesses and symbols of transience and development.

The exhibitionis composed of three practices: 
As a first step, the artist locates, identifies, and catalogues the plant species from his personal archive of photographs and images, all taken in the yard of the house where he grew up and where he now lives with his family. “The archive includes childhood photographs in which I appear in the garden, pictures I took as a young amateur photographer, images from visits and various occasions over the years, as well as family photographs in which the yard served as a backdrop for documenting the children—in everyday life and on special occasions.” (Ya'ari) 
From this diverse collection of photographs, spanning different formats and genres, Sharon Ya'ari created an index of over 200 plant species—species that grew in the various incarnations of this small garden over the course of 54 years: “Years of a garden with almost no gardening.” (Ya'ari)

The artist then photographed all the annual weeds growing in the garden over the course of a full year. These seasonal ‘wild’ weeds, which return and grow in the yard time and again, are often perceived as threatening and foreign to a maintained garden—yet at various periods they were a dominant force in the garden's landscape. The weeds are pulled them out with their roots, which forces a photography timeframe of several minutes before they wilt. They are photographed on a portable studio table in natural light.

Then there are photographs of seasonal vegetables that Ya'ari grows in a small bed specifically for the purpose of photographing them. “They tend to come out not quite fit for eating—but certainly fit for photographing. They are shot outdoors, at night, under artificial light.” (Ya'ari) 

The photographs of the weeds and vegetables are printed as analog silver gelatin prints on photographic paper from the 1970s, while the index photographs and pages are digitally printed.

Plants I didn’t ask for, ones I did is a body of work developed over the past two years, considering the idea of home and the question of belonging.