PLAN(e)T

PLAN(e)T focuses issues of survival, consumption and exploitation of natural resources, from past to present. It features artworks by leading artists, both local and international, together with groundbreaking research projects by TAU scholars. The exhibition explores the shifting relationship between power and sustainability –through the usage of vegetation and water – in a regional context and within a long historical perspective. It works to question humans’ use of natural resources and raise awareness to plants as intelligent beings, with their unique patterns of decision-making. This show demonstrates the great potential of combining artistic and scientific knowledge in addressing the burning ecological challenges of our day. Our programing, alongside the exhibition, includes partnerships with members from environmental studies, law, economics, philosophy, archeology, architecture and theater.

The exhibition includes a collaborative project by Israeli artist Liat Segal and TAU scientist, Dr. Yasmin Meroz. Segal, a contemporary artist known for her sophisticated use of technology in art, will be creating a field of ‘plant-like’ objects, which mimic plant behavior, based on Dr. Meroz’s innovative research, which is a part of the GrowBot project, funded by the EU. Plants, rooted in the ground, are interconnected within a network of natural species and resources, and are able to balance their need for survival with the preservation of their immediate surroundings. The piece allows visitors to see plants in a new light: it elevates our view of plants as informed beings, and suggests that we may lead more sustainable lives by adopting some of their patterns of behavior.

A part of this project is a reconstruction, in the Gallery’s sculpture garden, of Herod’s royal garden in Caesarea, based on recent archeobotanical research (Dr. Dafna Langgut, 2015). This project, which will develop alongside the exhibition, allows us to explore royal botanical structures, discuss their ecological costs, and question their future viability. Israeli artist Relli de Vries will create an innovative video production on the movement of plants in ancient times and on the exhibition of power in royal gardening.

This ancient reconstruction is paired with a contemporary artistic project by the leading artists “Fallen Fruit”. Fallen Fruit has exhibited in some of the world’s most esteemed cultural institutions: the Manifesta in Palermo (2018), Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University (2018), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2019), and more. Fallen Fruit designed a site-specific botanical portrait for our ground-floor gallery, based on a critical exploration of local histories, policies and consumption of fruit and plants. Their project is accompanied by public programming: planting, distributing fruit maps, foraging walks, creation of a digital magazine, children’s workshops, and more. Together, these two projects allow audiences to meditate on the tensions between power and sustainability, within a long historical perspective.

We are thrilled that Stéphane Thidet, a contemporary French artist whose recent piece, “Détournement” was received with great enthusiasm by viewers in Paris this past summer, has also agreed to participate in this show. In his piece, Thidet hangs very large stones up in the air, unsettling our typical notions of weight and gravity. These stones are weeping: drops of water fall onto the gallery’s floor, covered with red loam, turning it into a poetic and meditative space. The inclusion of this piece in the show is of utmost importance: alongside works that celebrate the power of nature, this piece raises difficult questions on humans’ exploitation of natural resources, and their viability for years to come. 

At the center of our exhibition we’re building a “Hub” – a space dedicated not only to viewing art but also to experimentation, research, and activities related to our main topic. This space provides audiences with supplementary materials that enrich visitors’ experience, including research materials, visual data and interactive tools that examine attitudes towards botanical environments. At the center of this space ONYA collective built an installation that grows as the exhibition progresses. Made of recycled wood and a variety of plants, this structure invites visitors to sit, read, discuss and meditate on the exhibition’s subject.

A final part of this project is an original theater production of William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Matan Amsalem and performed by the University’s Theater department. This play will address relationships between humans and their environment, and hierarchical fluidity between man, fauna and flora.

Curatorial Text:

We tend to view plants as objects: in the room there is a table, a chair, and a potted plant; outside there is a building, a bench, and a tree. Even though we know that plants are developing beings, we mostly place them closer to the world of objects than the world of living things – their growth rate is too slow for the human eye to observe, and our contact with them is primarily instrumental. Plants, flowers, and trees make up the backdrop for our lives and serve us as consumer products, primarily as food.

Yet in the reality of climate crisis, the dichotomy between nature and culture no longer suits humanity’s relations with the world. The exhibit “Plan(e)t” offers a fresh view of plants via a series of projects which integrate scientific research with artistic endeavor. The subtitle of the exhibit, “Plants Think, Think Plants,” declares its underlying logic: plants are “thinking” beings, and therefore we must think of them in more complex ways than we have done up to now. “Plan(e)t” has taken upon itself to present an original perspective of the encounter between the animal and plant kingdoms, sharing the same territory: Planet Earth. This view is based on the recognition that sustainable thinking must include a reevaluation of the hierarchy that places plants on a lower rung than living beings, and humans in particular.

The artworks comprising “Plan(e)t” conceive of the plant as a cultural embodiment of the complex relations between power and sustainability. They achieve this by relating both to the local context and a broad historical view. A majority of the works were created specifically for the gallery space, and most of them grow and change during the months of the exhibition. The concepts “sustainability” and “localness” are central to the discussion that the exhibit seeks to foster, based on the innovative cooperation that has been carried out there between artists and researchers. The exhibit strives to confront the viewer with the limitations of awareness that shape our relationship with our environment, its richness and our uses of it, without giving in to the eco-centric position which entirely denies the hierarchy between humans and all other species on the planet.

The question arises: how can one speak of plants without subjugating them to human principles, and at the same time, without making them once again the ultimate “other”? Via the artistic experience, the works before us form the foundation for a new stance – more thoughtful, affirming, and sustainable – towards the world we live in.

1. David Burns and Austin Young – Promised Land

Promised Land, a work by David Burns and Austin Young (“Fallen Fruit”) is a local portrait of a different sort: all the plants shown were photographed by the artists in the preceding months throughout Israel, and the stuffed birds were photographed at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University. The rich collage before us marks the space of the Land of Israel as a source for the creation of culture – the region where, 6500 years ago, human beings began to cultivate fruit trees for food – but also indicates the danger facing species diversity in our environment. The esthetic appeal and vivid colors give the viewer a sense of being surrounded by utter paradise. Yet, a second look reveals cracks in the esthetic celebration with the appearance of a threatening element: birds of prey – creatures that once were impossible to catch, but are now dead. Most of them are endangered or extinct.

David Burns and Austin Young (Fallen Fruit) Promised Land 2020 Site-specific installation, Custom Fabric wallpaper, Custom Fabric Curtain, and hand-drawn maps printed on recycled paper. Courtesy of the artists

Human presence appears in this work by the way nature is marked: tying up the first fruits with a bright blue ribbon, or wrapping catalog labels around the birds’ legs. This work integrates a promise with a warning: the rainbow colors symbolize the promise that the earth will never again experience a flood the likes of which the biblical Noah saw; at the same time, it is humans’ task to preserve this very earth. Yet man has failed at this task, and his interference with nature has irreversible consequences. Promised Land is not just the specific country in which we are located, but the entire planet – with its fantastic abundance and the lurking danger it faces.

Alongside the installation, the artists created six maps of fruit trees in different Tel Aviv neighborhoods. These “treasure maps” encourage us to rediscover our surroundings: to go on foot, to speak with strangers, and to share edible fruits. Such fruit, according to Burns and Young, is the ultimate gift to us from nature: if we do not eat it, it will fall to the ground and rot. By foregrounding the fruits growing in public spaces, the artists seek to challenge the norms of belonging and ownership and stimulate more shared, communal networks. In a reality where people are not motivated to be physically active – living mostly in the virtual world behind the computer keyboard – the artists invite us to look at our surroundings with different eyes. Their works prompt us to learn how to change the way we treat the beings who comprise our environment: plants, animals, and people.

2. Onya Collective – The Living Room (Supported by GreenWall)

The Living Room, created by “Onya Collective,” is a space meant for lingering, reading, and expanding one’s knowledge on the topics of the exhibit. It is a green, growing space that hosts workshops and discussions, and will continue to grow and develop throughout the exhibition. The installation is built on materials existing in the gallery and its surroundings: wood from a previous exhibit, cuttings from plants throughout the campus, and other available materials.

The Living Room, which displays different types of habitats for plants, demonstrates how to use simple, readily available means to create a green, pleasant, and abundant environment. Its goal is to make information accessible and suggest sustainable models of operation, to be applied by visitors. When the exhibit closes, the components of “The Living Room” will find new homes and be planted in new places, emphasizing continuous use and reuse of resources. The guiding values of the collective are reducing the environmental footprint and maximizing the utility obtained in the work.

                                         Credit: Asaf Brenner

“Onya Collective” brings together architects, designers, and social activists who are working to create positive places within the city, where nature and people meet. The group designs creative urban interventions and runs artistic community events in the field of urban ecology. Its activities offer new ways to enjoy urban nature so as to improve the quality of both public and private spaces.

3. Relli de Vries – Pollen and Amaryllis Belladonna

An outdoor Plan(e)t project will be planted in the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden in the next few months. The project, a garden planned by the artist and landscape architect Relli de Vries, reflects research done by Dr. Dafna Langgut of Tel Aviv University. The garden will restore plants found by Dr. Langgut in Herod’s royal gardens by cultivating fossilized grains of pollen preserved for two thousand years. These grains of pollen point to the different types of ancient plant life, as well as to the geopolitical forces that shaped them. This project is represented inside the gallery by a film titled “Pollen” that de Vries created specifically for the exhibition. 

Additionally, de Vries exhibits Amaryllis Belladonna, a cast stone statue of the roots of an amaryllis belladonna – a mature tuber whose roots were forced to develop within the confines of the container in which it was planted. This plant appears in myths as an historical expression of beauty, love, and longing. The young girl Amaryllis, named after the plant, (or perhaps the plant was named after her) is the object of love in various Greek myths and in Roman and Renaissance culture. An operatic aria, based on the story of a man in love with Amaryllis, serves as the soundtrack, which can be heard on the earphones provided.

In casting the living roots as an artistic fossil, de Vries communicates existential constraint. This fossil is a casting from which the liquid has been expropriated, and it now drains into a bucket of water hanging below the casting. This work converses with ancient practices of controlling Nature, such as that adopted by Herod the Great, in which plants were grown in pots buried in the ground.

Appropriation, adoption of Nature’s beauty for the purposes of self-definition, and restraining it by growing plants in containers – all these characterize the process of domestication and acculturation of ornamental plants from Herod’s time to our own. The casting of roots created by Relli de Vries is in fact a unit of weight that expresses these values, thereby offering a new way of thinking about the relationship between plants and humans, between nature and culture. 

4. Noam Rabinovich – Maps

Noam Rabinovich’s Maps, as the title indicates, map the delicate, intimate relationship of the artist with his natural surroundings. Rabinovich is a unique artist: he is a sower, a tiller of the soil, and a researcher, who maintains an ongoing, day-to-day relationship with the plants he cultivates and cares for. Unlike maps that are intended to mark directions, goals, a single road to follow, Rabinovich’s maps encourage strolling and prompt a private, sensual relationship with the place.

Like other projects in the exhibition, which spur us to rethink issues of ownership and belonging, Rabinovich also works an anonymous public land, but he breathes new life into it and invests it with new meaning. The topographical lines of the wadi (dry river bed) next to his home, Kibbutz Beit Hashitah, interweave the drawing and mark the walking route itself.

Rabinovich’s work converses with a long history of botanical drawings yet does not portray the plant as an object. Rather, his art is a living testimony of working the land. Rabinovich works the paper the way he works the land. He draws and erases, erases and draws, turns it over and over – until the drawing contains the many, varied archeological layers that brought it into being.

5. Liat Segal – Tropism

We have before us a field of robotic “plants,” which traces the characteristics and behaviors of real plants. The artist Liat Segal, known for her sophisticated use of technology, has created giant stalks that respond to changing light in the gallery space. Similar to plants in nature, their motion follows the light and adapts as it changes. The stalks are coated with carbon fibers, a material which incorporates both organic and artificial qualities, imparting to the stalks a futuristic feeling. Their motion is based on scientific data from the research of Dr. Yasmine Meroz, who studies plants’ memory and decision making – research being conducted as part of the GrowBot project, with financing by the European Union.

Liat Segal Tropism 2020 Site-specific installation, electronics, mechanics, software, cement, iron, carbon fibers. Courtesy of the artists

This innovative collaboration between an artist and a scientist has subverted the common notions we hold about plants. In medicine, the state called “vegetable” indicates a loss of consciousness, thought, recognition, and ability to absorb information from the surroundings. This approach can be traced to Aristotle’s claim that plants lack comprehension, senses, and motion. But today we know that all this is untrue: plants respond to external stimuli and even respond with movement. The work before us makes us aware of them as rational beings, capable of learning, solving problems, and making decisions – beings with complex comprehension and behavior which is not human, but not necessarily inferior to that of humans.

”Tropism,” directional growing movement in response to external stimuli, challenges the familiar hierarchy between nature and humanity. In the strange, surrealistic world that Segal has created, the plants have grown to human proportions and move about at human speed. The mechanical soundtrack of their movements stands in opposition to plants’ calm, balanced behavior in nature. This is a work which asks the viewer to consider changes that take place over time, in the artificial sunrises and sunsets that illuminate the gallery and the stalks’ reaction to them. Natural plants, rooted in the ground, act as an integral element of a wide net of species – allies and rivals. Even though plants compete for resources, they do not fight with species that are stronger than them, and they know how to establish an optimal balance between their need for survival and their need to protect their immediate environment. In this sense we, human beings, have a great deal to learn from plants about the equilibrium required for a sustainable way of life.

6. Stéphane Thidet – The Crying Stones

                                            8.1.2020-30.6.2020

Participants: David Burns and Austin Young (Fallen Fruit) // Relli de Vries // Stéphane Thidet // Dr. Dafna Langgut // Dr. Yasmine Meroz // Liat Segal // Onya Collective // Noam Rabinovich

Chief curators: Dr. Tamar Mayer, Dr. Sefy Hendler

Assistant to the Chief Curator: Yifat Pearl

Theater Curator: Dr. Sharon Aronson Lehavi

The University Art Gallery, Antin Square, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv – Entrance to the Gallery from 64 Chaim Levanon Street, corner of Einstein Street

Opening hours: Sun. – Wed. 11:00 – 19:00, Thurs. 11:00 – 21:00, Fri. 10:00 – 14:00