“I originally became interested in sunflowers while planting my wheat field. In my constant research I learned that alternating planting wheat and sunflowers helps to keep the soil rich and ensure its fertility. We accept soil and think little of its existence, but all life depends on this thin layer surrounding the globe. Sunflowers are happy plants that mean many things in different cultures. For the Chinese, they are good luck, and for the Incas, they symbolized the Sun God. I am glad you are planting these flowers in all possible areas. It’ll bring pleasure and well-being, as do all things that grow and live. When things grow, blossom, life is expressing its transformations and secrets. Watch, listen, participate. We all can be like sunflowers–grow, nourish, endow others with our richness, turn to the sun, then reflect its warmth to all living creatures.”

Agnes Denes, an iconic, feminist, New York-based artist of Hungarian origin, declared in her 1969 Manifesto that she wanted to leave the ivory tower of her studio and enter the world of global concerns, "communicating the incommunicable," "visualizing the invisible," and "not accepting the limitations society has accepted." She initiated many visionary experiments of cohabitation through art. Her well-known statement, Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982), two acres of wheat planted on a landfill in Manhattan near Wall Street, introduced environmental art as an urban ecological intervention, suggesting where future struggles would take place. Now the Stadtpark hosts Sunflower Field, including the artist’s Manifesto. The summer installation follows the sun and prepares the soil for future planting, linking it to the historical placement of flower beds on the local grass. It is a public artwork that produces more oxygen than it consumes and a proposal of regeneration without gentrification, as, in the words of the artist, a gesture of "seeing reality and still being able to dream."


Agnes Denes was born in 1931 in Budapest and lives in New York City.

The work has been realized in collaboration with Autostrada Biennale, Kosovo.

Location of the work on Google Maps