Exhibition
TRAVELLING PLANTS - TRANSDISCIPLINARY PROJECT
Travelling Plants is a multiphase transdisciplinary project initiated and led by the Goethe Institut, in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Madras and the Institut Français de Pondichéry, curated by Lina Vincent.
The first phase of the project commenced in early March 2024, bringing together five visual and research-based artists from India, Sri Lanka, France, and Germany for a research-focused residency at The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP). IFP is a research institution established in 1956, with a herbarium containing over 27,875 specimens of trees, shrubs, herbs, fungi, and algae from India and around the world.
During the four week residency, artists Karolina Grzywnowicz (Germany), Wendy Therméa (Reunion Island, France), Danushka Marasinghe (Sri Lanka), Waylon D’souza (India), and Rashmimala (India), were presented with a diverse programme including workshops on cyanotypes and botanical drawing, a series of lectures and presentations from experts that took them into the histories, uses, and journeys of plants, and the opportunity to directly interact with scientists and technicians across departments at IFP, including social sciences, ecology, indology, geomatics, and the photo archives.
In these hands-on interactions, the five artists dissected flowers, inspected pollen under a microscope, and learned how palm leaf manuscripts were historically assembled. While spending time on individual research, they also embarked on several field trips with researchers and botanists, visiting the Auroville Botanical Garden, the Pichavaram mangrove, and the exhibition, Plants from Tranquebar that was on view at the Maritime Museum, Tharangambadi, created in collaboration with IFP’s department of ecology. Collecting their own plant samples at Aranya, a reforested sanctuary in Auroville, they learned the method for preparing, drying, and stitching their own herbarium sheets.
During the residency, the artists also engaged in a knowledge exchange, sharing their work with each other and researchers through presentations, discussing the ways in which their own creative practices responded to the many streams of research they encountered at IFP.
Upon the culmination of the residency, the artists returned to their personal studios to further develop ideas sparked during the residency. Exploring varied historical, contemporary socio-cultural, political, and environmental concerns, they presented them through the lens of their practices, eventually showcasing their work in Travelling Plants.
Travelling Plants will be on view in New Delhi from Friday, 5 September 2025 until Saturday, 20 September 2025 at FICA Reading Room in Lado Sarai.