Eduardo Kac - "Unter Pflanzen" exhibition at the Sinclair-Haus Museum in Bad Homburg, Germany

03/16/2025

March 16, 2025 - August 17, 2025

The artists in the exhibition "Unter Pflanzen" show us plants as living, sentient beings with countless connections. Their works encourage us to perceive plants with all our senses and to be fascinated by their different forms, abilities and ways of inhabiting 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 so little of what they do: how they feed, how they 'breathe' oxygen, how they communicate with each other - for example, to warn each other of pests - or how they associate with fungi. We cannot perceive with our senses how they react to other living things, what they sense and why they choose to grow here or there. They are intelligent in their own way, and live their lives at a different pace to us humans. To understand them, we need to slow down, observe and work out what questions we can ask them to learn more about them. For some of the works on display, the insights of the natural sciences are indispensable: Since 2022, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch and Rasa Smite have devoted themselves to the artistic study of three plants: the angel's trumpet, amaranth and sweet lupine. Their works, together with those of Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy and Ursula Damm, are part of the artistic research project Plants_Intelligence. You will probably see plants in a different light after visiting the exhibition.

With works by :

Felipe Castelblanco, Ursula Damm, Thorben Danke, Maya Deren & Tally Beatty, Mary Delany, Wim van Egmond, Kalle Hamm & Dzamil Kamanger, Eduardo Kac , Kahn & Selesnick, Ernst Kreidolf, Debora Lombardi, Jesse McLean, Julia Mensch, Max Reichmann, Mathilde Rosier, Omi-peah Ryding and Roman Schramm, Scenocosme, Ann Shelton, Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Kiki Smith, Una Szeemann, Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy, Lois Weinber.

The exhibition “Unter Pflanzen” is a cooperation between the Sinclair-Haus Museum and the research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant, led by Yvonne Volkart, which is located at the Institute for Art Gender Nature at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.