PHYTO-TRAVELLERS
PHYTO-TRAVELLERS
focuses on the cultural appropriation and domestication of plants from the world's other regions and culturess.
ZKM | Center for Art and Media
opening: Friday, 25.07.2025 19:30 Uhr CEST
ZKM Kubus | Subraum 24/7 visible from the outside
Lorenzstraße 19
76135 Karlsruhe
PHYTO-TRAVELLERS
When Christopher Columbus returned from his voyage to the "New World" in 1492, he brought numerous plants back to Europe – including maize, tomatoes, and potatoes. Since then, plants introduced from other regions have been referred to as neophytes – "new plants."
Initially, these were mostly crops that were deliberately spread in the course of colonization to be cultivated profitably on a global scale. Later, ornamental plants were added – collected and imported by researchers and so-called plant hunters for their beauty, exotic appearance, or commercial value. In our contemporary gardens, species like rhododendron, cherry laurel, or bamboo not only tell stories of global plant migration, but also reflect aesthetic ideals and gardening trends of different eras. At the same time, they point to ecological challenges that neophytes pose today in the context of climate change and globalized trade.
One striking example is the camellia – a member of the tea family that has been known in Asia for thousands of years as cha or chai. In the 18th century, it was given the name Camellia in Europe, named after Georg Joseph Kamel and mediated through Carl Linnaeus.
In my project “The gentlemen in my garden”, I explore the historical and contemporary dimensions of plant migration — focusing on species that lost their original names and identities through their transcontinental journeys and were renamed in the West.
With my new project Phyto-Travellers - for the ZKM Karlsruhe - I place this aspect of cultural domestication and appropriation of plants from other world regions at the center of my artistic inquiry. The installation is composed of ornamental plants that were once newcomers but are now so firmly rooted in our gardens that they are often perceived as native – shaping our landscape in familiar ways.
The form of the work references this colonial legacy: at a scale of 2:3, I recreate the outline of the Niña – one of Columbus’s ships that symbolically carried the first “new plants” to Europe. Mounted on stacked transport pallets, this structure creates an indoor garden of neophytes – a living archive that traces the botanical legacy of a globalized world.
Phyto-Travellers is both a poetic and critical engagement with the close entanglement of natural and cultural history. The installation reveals how plants have been recoded not only economically and ecologically, but also symbolically and culturally. It invites us to rethink ideas of belonging, migration, and the power of plants.
26.07.2025 - 26.10.2025