Diana Scherer – Farming Textiles
Museum Kraneburgh, NL
01.10. – 10.03.2024

Artist Diana Scherer (DE, 1971) creates botanical installations, objects, textiles and photography and is a pioneer in biotechnological art. Scherer is driven by admiration for-and curiosity about-what neurobiologists call the 'brain of plants'. She studies plants and root systems to guide their natural growth processes. In her studio, she creates artificial biotopes to grow her work using soil, seeds, light and underground templates in both natural and man-made patterns. Scherer guides the roots so that they grow according to her patterns. This creates intriguing organic tissues that reveal not only the nature constrained by man, but also the limits to that constraint: nature, wherever possible, eventually claims its own chaos.

With her presentation Farming Textiles at Museum Kranenburgh, Diana Scherer shows her art for the first time in a large, museum-wide solo presentation that includes many new works. She presents the root systems she created as textiles, or as living sculptures that let you follow the growth process of the roots.

With her work, Scherer explores the relationship between humans and the natural environment, made visible by the boundaries between (plant) culture and (plant) nature. In doing so, it asks questions about what is natural, and what is not. To what extent can humans influence natural processes? And what does that mean for man's role or position in his natural habitat? These are topical questions at a time when the Earth's climate and atmosphere are irreversibly changing as a result of human activities.

Scherer's work deals with the tension between the human urge to want to control nature and the uncontrollable force of nature itself. Scherer depicts these in a poetic and meaningful way, while being innovative in her use of materials. Her work is unique, topical and urgent.

(translated with deepl.com)

More information: Diana Scherer - Farming Textiles - Museum Kranenburgh