Daadgalerie

Featuring a selection of works from the 1980s to the present, the exhibition Parlament der Pflanzen (Parliament of plants) presents various artistic strategies dedicated to the political dimensions of plants. Examining in detail and taking stock of our environment from a botanical perspective, a variety of subjects and positions are placed on the agenda and addressed:

Cultivating consumable plants in an urban environment as a demonstration of self-sufficiency and rootedness in the context of political protests, plants as economic value, seeds and fruits as repositories of historical layers or as monuments for eradicated peoples and languages, represent only a few of the themes taken up in the exhibition.

Paul-Armand Gette’s photographs of exotic plants in Berlin’s urban environment (Exotik als Banalität, 1980) and Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s concept (Trümmerflora on the Topography of Terror, 1988–9) provide a glimpse of the history of the Artists-in-Berlin Program and how its guest artists have engaged with the city of Berlin. At the same time, the exhibited works also serve as historical documents, capturing the urban landscape at a specific moment in time.