”Among plants”: Final exhibition of the research project ‘Plants_Intelligence’ of the HGK Basel

The exhibition ‘Among Plants’, which can be seen from 16 March to 17 August 2025 at the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg and marks the final phase of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-funded research project ‘Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant’ at the Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) at the HGK Basel, invites you to slow down. To listen. To encounter plants. How often do we walk past them without giving them a second glance? How rarely do we remember that our breath, food and clothing connect us to them? We are constantly among plants - let's get to know our neighbours. Let's develop a sense for plants.

The artists in the exhibition curated by Kathrin Meyer and Yvonne Volkart with Moritz Ohlig and Sophie Olivotto show plants as living, perceptive beings that enter into countless connections. Their works encourage us to perceive plants with all our senses and to be fascinated by their respective shapes, their abilities and their ways of populating the world. Some artworks explore how plants have shaped human cultures for centuries, both in Europe and in indigenous communities in South America. Others create plant-human hybrids, exploring how close or distant we feel to plants.

Plants puzzle us because we see little of what they do: How they feed themselves, how they ‘breathe out’ oxygen, communicate with each other - warn each other of pests, for example - or team up with fungi. We cannot perceive with our senses how they react to other living beings, what they sense and why they decide to grow here or there. They are intelligent in their own way and manage their lives at a different speed to us humans. To understand them, we need to slow down, observe and find out what questions we can ask them to learn more about them.

For some of the artworks on display, the findings of the natural sciences are indispensable: Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch and Rasa Smite have dedicated themselves to the artistic research of three plants since 2022: the angel's trumpet, the amaranth and the sweet lupine. Their works were created alongside those of Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy and Ursula Damm as part of the artistic research project Plants_Intelligence. Plants will probably be seen with different eyes after visiting the exhibition.

The ‘Among Plants’ magazine published to accompany the exhibition brings together literature and poetry as well as texts from the fields of philosophy, art, media, literature and natural sciences, each of which explores plants as intelligent, sentient beings in a specific way. Available exclusively from 16 March at the Sinclair House museum ticket office.

The research project led by Dr Yvonne Volkart, ‘Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant’ is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and is affiliated to the Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN) at the HGK Basel.

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