When art is a garden: it all started in Venice 20 years ago

At the Giardini della Biennale, already normally full of decadent charm, vegetation also spreads inside the Pavilion of the Czech Republic and Slovakia: the building is partially gutted and becomes a sort of neo-romantic ruin. We are in Venice, it is 2009. Although not openly an ecological stance, this intervention by Roman Ondák can be considered a kind of progenitor. In recent years, following the progressive awareness of the climate crisis, more and more artists have created gardens, plantations, cultivations of various kinds. Their approach is renewed, more radical than that of traditional environmentalism. The viewer encounters ecosystems created to reflect on and raise awareness of issues such as sustainability, integral ecology, access to resources and equality between species. The relationship between man and nature is obviously one of the most investigated themes. Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates, for example, transform the front lawn of typical American terraced houses into self-sufficient growing spaces for the inhabitants' livelihood. The tradition of the man-made garden, in particular the French garden, has been taken up by Yinka Shonibare with the Jardin d'amour set up in 2007 at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, but also by Suzanne Husky, who, however, has provided decidedly revisited and wild versions of it. With his installations of floral species, Sammy Baloji reflects on the colonialism and extractivism that have afflicted and continue to afflict his nation, Congo, while Diana Lelonek's indomitable little plants find an unexpected habitat in waste of various kinds, such as plastic debris.

“Pollinator Pathmaker LAS Edition in human vision” (2023), di Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. (Courtesy the artist. © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd)

Other authors aim for an overcoming, or at least a radical rethinking, of human influence on nature. One of the major works in this field is certainly Pollinator Pathmaker, a spectacular garden created by London-based Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (1982) in the outdoor spaces of various institutions. "An interspecies artwork designed for pollinators, planted and tended by humans, intended to revolutionise the way we view a garden," reads the presentation of the planting-installation, which harnesses the computational power of an algorithm. "I wanted to be personally involved in the creation of the technology," the artist explains to HTSI, "to understand what values we attribute to it and what values we attribute to nature. Humans make gardens - which is itself a form of technology - primarily for themselves. I, on the other hand, have delegated design to an algorithm precisely to prevent myself from making aesthetic choices influenced by my tastes, to satisfy the tastes of plants and pollinators instead. The difficulties I voluntarily create for myself in the design process serve to perform a critical investigation, to ask burning questions about human creativity, about why we destroy and create, and for whom". With its freedom untethered from function and the search for utility, art would seem to be a perfect tool to awaken consciences, to sabotage the temptation to deny a problem with unimaginable consequences such as the climate crisis. "Artists," Ginsberg continues, "can tell stories, arouse emotions and even have a say: these are the intentions of Pollinator Pathmaker and on pollinator.art you can create your own home-grown edition, thus contributing to the creation of an enormously extensive work that has a positive impact on the climate. Art can transform us individually and perhaps also collectively. Climate and biodiversity crises, however, are the result of political, social and economic choices. As citizens, we have the power and responsibility to engage, but change requires a will that I do not currently see - not even, to be honest, in my daily behaviour. So I ask myself: what is stopping us from taking action? Why do human beings find it difficult to think and act in the long term?". Creations of this kind also subvert the logic of the market. Often realised outdoors, they require a commission from public or private institutions or a fundraising operation - and in the majority of cases they stand alongside more traditional works in the artists' production. "Of course, many of my installations are not easy to collect," the artist continues. "Even in the case of free editions of living artworks that the public can plant at home or at school, the investment is in buying the plants, the labour and the space, not in buying the digital work (I like to say this is an anti-NFT!). I want to challenge the way we perceive the value of a work, turn consumers into custodians of art and value abundance over scarcity. It has to be said, though, that I work with different media and tools, from less traditional ones to objects such as tapestries, stained glass, videos and prints, which can be collected. But I do not have a gallery: I sell directly to museums and collectors'.

Da sinistra, “Maggio 2020, Caro Campo” e “Ottobre 2020, Caro Campo”, di Luca Boffi. L’installazione è un’esperienza umana, artistica e ambientale vissuta in un campo di 299 pioppi, destinati a essere tagliati, sulle sponde del fiume Secchia dove l’artista ha realizzato venti opere temporanee, totalmente esposte alle trasformazioni naturali. (Jacopo Valentini, courtesy Luca Boffi.)

Otobong Nkanga (born 1974 in Kano, Nigeria, but lives in Antwerp) is another leading figure of the new artistic ecologism. Through collectable works such as paintings, tapestries and installations, but also through ambitious interventions in public space, his research focuses on the concept of territory as a place of non-participation. The relationship between human culture, nature, vegetation and soil is reinterpreted by breaking down traditional categories of identity. In 2023, his open-air intervention entitled Of Grounds, Guts and Stones brought planters housing local and seasonal aromatic plants to Turin, accompanied by metal and marble elements. A newly conceived public space, designed so that passers-by, plants and minerals could experience new relationships. On the other hand, the idea of integral ecology underlies the activities of the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise: the proceeds from the works of art created by the collective are used to buy back land, restore forests and create community gardens.

In Italia, attention to these themes and this type of creation is mainly found in the latest generations (although the planting of weed species by a mid-career such as Nico Vascellari, who invaded the Sala delle Cariatidi of the Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2025, should not be forgotten). In our panorama, Luca Boffi (Milan, 1991) is a peculiar figure: to an already successful artistic career he combines the activity of a farmer, living on the farm where he is employed. Art and life come together, because 'a correspondence between what one thinks and what one does helps one to mature and grow', he explains. But artistic creation remains autonomous: 'You have to leave enough room for uncertainty, for intuition, characteristics close to those of dreams'. His research aims to arouse "an awareness of one's own territory without trying to possess it. We must not try to personify it, but rely on it and accept it. One can dialogue with places even in silence. Even alone, because the absence of man is not an absence of dialogue of life, nor of understanding'. As an artistic action, then, it is not necessary to create a plantation ex novo, one can also live with an existing one. Caro Campo by Boffi is a 'human, artistic and environmental experience lived in symbiosis with a field of 299 poplars, destined to be cut down, on the banks of the river Secchia'. Travelling to the site every day, the artist created twenty temporary works, leaving them exposed to the transformations caused by nature.

Due immagini di “Nomadic Garden” (2023–oggi), di Peng Shuai Paolo: una coltivazione di cinque piante di origine cinese, capaci di resistere a diversi ambienti e temperature, che l’artista trasporta in una serie di performance nelle città. (Courtesy Casa del Direttore e C+N Gallery CANEPANERI. Fotografia di Emanuele Dell’Aglio. Colle di Tora, Italia.)

Among the more radical approaches, typical of the latest generation, is that of Stefano Ferrari (Gallarate, 1996). His Bouquet Transpecie, for example, is "a flowerbed of aridoculture experimentation that allows one to emancipate oneself from the restrictive guidelines of the multinationals, which push research only on certain varieties". Come polvere in rivolta, on the other hand, created at the Filetto cemetery, is a 'mapping of local varieties that allows anyone who wants to to take care of them and pick flowers to place on the graves'. According to Ferrari, 'the artist has the responsibility of being an activist, in the sense of activator: initiator of processes and new reflections that decentralise anthropic individualism even if only for a moment. That is why with my works I embrace life by considering species or kingdoms other than my own'.