[Summer 2025]

The Age of Plants
by Bénédicte Ramade

[EXCERPT]

With the exhibition Science/Fiction, une non-histoire des Plantes, the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris bore witness to the turn toward plants that has been shaking up the cultural world for a decade, overturning general preconceptions regarding this realm of the living world. Inspired by botanical researchers’ scientific explorations, the artists in the exhibition recognized these resolutely “more-than-human” entities’ complex intelligence by calling upon photography and its technical history as well as generative artificial intelligence (GAI) animated images to reveal the plant imaginary.

There have been countless scientific publications on plants in recent years. Botanical blindness – a concept formulated in 1999 by Elisabeth E. Schussler and James H. Wandersee – has apparently finally come to an end. The hyper-alterity of plants has led to their being described as more-than-human in recent Anthropocene narratives that underscore their distinctive autotrophic life cycle, during which they nourish themselves directly from solar energy. Today, plants are receiving due attention to their skills and strengths after having been relegated for too long to a limiting vegetative context. Only flowers had burst through these confines, based on their profitable finery. The “plant turn” (as it is known in the academic world) has been underway since the early twenty-first century. As Quentin Hiernaux notes, “The exponential development of [the science of] ecology has forced us to come to a different, and no doubt better, understanding of the plant kingdom and its interaction with the rest of the world.”

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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 129 – FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: The Age of Plants]

Bénédicte Ramade an art historian, teacher, curator, and researcher. Specializing in environmental issues in historical and contemporary art practices, she has developed over the last decade expertise in approaches to plant life (degardening, invasive plants, botanical hospitalities, and ferality). Her most recent exhibition, dedicated to David Lafrance’s gardening and painting project Huit saisons, took place in Salle Alfred-Pellan at the Maison des arts de Laval in 2024-25.