The exhibition Science/Fiction — A non-history of Plants traces a visual history of plants linking 19th century art, technology and sciencee century to the present day. Bringing together more than 40 artists from different eras and nationalities, this exhibition compares historical photographic works such as the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins, the inventory of plant forms by Karl Blossfeldt or the microscope experiments of Laure Albin Guillot with creations by contemporary artists such as Jochen Lempert, Pierre Joseph, Angelica Mesiti, Agnieszka Polska and Sam Falls.
Conceived in six chapters, this exhibition borrows its construction from the science fiction novel: starting with the idea of a stable and identifiable world, it gradually plunges into uncertain and unexpected landscapes. The first two chapters entitled respectively “The agency of plants” and “Symbiosis & contamination” are devoted to so-called objective approaches, linked to science. The four other chapters, called “Beyond reality”, “Plants are watching you”, “Plants as political fiction” and “Speculative fiction(s)” address the connections between science and science fiction. , two areas which have made flora a field of experimentation. Going beyond the normative divides between fiction and reality, science and art, the artists present in this exhibition free themselves from fixed categories in order to capture the complexity of plant life and our relationships with plant beings.
This exhibition is an opportunity to delve into the heart of the privileged relationship between photography and videography with plants, two techniques for capturing images whose primary use was put at the service of scientific research. Paradoxically, while interposing between us and the natural world, these photographic and cinematographic processes, instead of creating a distance, have highlighted the subjectivity, intelligence and expressive capacities of plants, palliating our “anthropocentric myopia “.
By questioning projections and human representations of plants, this exhibition integrates narratives from science and science fiction as a means of creating new imaginations. The proposed stories, not centered on the idea of progress and modernity, think with planetary limits. These emancipatory stories, going beyond an anthropocentric vision of the world, give plants a place and a voice. They thus become a space for repairing our connection to the plant world. To think about ecological changes, it is necessary to take into consideration the political power of the imagination, to accept our hopes and explore our most intimate fears, in order to continue writing a common future together.
Practical information
European House of Photography (MEP)
5/7 rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
Such. : +33 (0)1 44 78 75 00.
From Wednesday October 16, 2024 to Sunday January 19, 2025
Wednesday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Weekends from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
(Slot reserved for subscribers on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.)
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
