Therme Art Program
STEFANO MANCUSO’S NATION OF PLANTS AT DOHA EXPO
Neurobiologist and Professor Stefano Mancuso, a longstanding friend and guiding force of Therme Art, presents Nation of Plants at the Doha Expo in Qatar from October 2, 2023 till March 28, 2024. Spanning eight immersive rooms, the exhibition portrays the plant kingdom as a real nation—complete with a flag, a constitution, and rights—and invites visitors on an experiential journey, featuring interactive objects and multimedia content that delve into the fascinating realm of plants.
Produced in collaboration with Red Joint Films and Balich Wonder Studio, and named after Mancuso’s best-selling book from 2021, Nation of Plants advises us, humans, to learn from plants on how to coexist together on this planet for our joint survival. Each room in the exhibition’s journey is dedicated to exploring the intricacies of plant intelligence and their unique ability to learn and communicate with their environment.
One room explores the structural and functional complexity of plants, contrasting them with humans and examining the myriad opportunities that arise from their diversity. In another, visitors walk through a corridor that simulates entering the trunk of a tree, leading them all the way through its crown to study the insides of this living organism. Beyond the trees’ branches is an interactive environment that illustrates plants’ superpowers—from their multiple senses (up to fifteen compared to humans’ five) to their symbiotic relationships with other organisms and other fascinating tricks.
Perhaps the most striking lesson imparted in the exhibition is about ‘plant blindness syndrome,’ which refers to humans’ inability to notice plants in their surroundings, recognize their importance, or appreciate their unique biological features. This bias is widespread and has been studied by various experts from the fields of botany and biology. The oversight of the most ancient and vast lifeform on earth, which comprises 85% of our planet’s biomass, reveals the perilous limitations of a human-centric view of the world.
Through Nation of Plants, Mancuso introduces audiences to potential solutions rooted in plant intelligence that can be applicable on a wide scale, including urban environments. In 2021, Therme Art partnered with Mancuso and his think tank Pnat (Project Nature) to support the presentation of the installation titled Mutual Aid as part of the Resilient Communities exhibition in the Italian Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. Responding to La Biennale’s exhibition theme, How will we live together?, Mutual Aid explored the intricate systems of cooperation within underground root structures as a case study for how to live together harmoniously above ground. It prompted visitors to take a critical look at the human-centric organisation of the world, and to adopt a view that acknowledges the constant, horizontal exchange taking place between plants, humans, bacteria, and fungi alike.
This topic was explored further by Mancuso in conversation with artists, scientists, and scholars at two of Wellbeing Culture Forums that Therme Art hosted during the Biennale: Resurrecting the Sublime: The Smell of Gaia’s Molecules and Mutual Aid: The Politics of Gaia (full recordings are available online for viewing).
Among others, Mancuso was joined in conversation by cultural historian Salome Rodeck, whose research focuses on microbiologist Lynn Margulis’s work and her contributions to James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory. She remarked that Margulis was very outspoken about the pitfalls of the animal-centric perspective of evolutionary theory, highlighting that most of its concepts do not apply to the world of bacteria. “Bacteria are wild,” stated Rodeck. Artist Sissel Tolaas, who used bioengineering to recreate the smell of extinct flower molecules in her installation Resurrecting the Sublime at the Biennale, explained, “the first way of communication on planet earth, between bacteria, was through smell molecules—long before there was the word.” Through her work, she challenges audiences to go beyond the human, visually-dominant perception of the world. Environmental and indigenous rights activist Nina Gualinga spoke about her community’s cosmovision in the Ecuadorian Amazon and described the way they live their lives in a delicate balance with all living organisms. She warned about the dangers that stemfrom interrupting that symbiotic balance, recalling the threats her community encountered in the face of extractive oil companies within their territory.
The topics explored at La Biennale in 2021, which responded to the exhibition’s theme, How can we live together?, still resonate and are echoed strongly in the Nation of Plants exhibition currently on view in Qatar. As urbanisation accelerates, embracing principles of plant intelligence—such as cooperation, decentralised horizontal structures, and symbiosis—becomes imperative, urging us to transition from a human-centric view of nature to one that integrates all living organisms into urban development. Nation of Plants urges us to advance in this direction, integrating these principles into architectural and urban planning, to ensure the sustainability and resilience of our cities. Visitors to Nation of Plants may depart the exhibition realising that this shift in perspective is not only feasible but most importantly, essential.
