Angiosperm

The sudden and unexplained spread of angiosperms during the Cretaceous period marks one of the greatest disruptions in evolutionary history. Within a short span of time, new modes of pollination, fruits, and seeds emerged, transforming the planet’s entire food chain and triggering the rapid diversification of insects, birds, and mammals. This was not a gradual development, but an explosive leap in which the previous logic of life ceased to operate.

Mari Männa’s sculptural forms point to states in which life is still gathering itself, searching for form and endurance. The emergence of flowering plants did not signal completion, but vulnerability: new forms had to survive through trial and error, and through constant adaptation within an environment that was at once fertile and hostile.

This experience also resonates with the history of Estonia’s islands, where life has taken shape through repeated disruptions, violence, and enforced adaptation. The evolution of flowering plants reveals endurance as the capacity to persist within uncertainty. As with island life, endurance here does not signify stability, but resilience – the ability to remain even as the world is repeatedly rewritten.