Videos by Giovanni Aloi
Artists and scholars are embracing the idea that materials are not passive or inert, but that the... more Artists and scholars are embracing the idea that materials are not passive or inert, but that they brim with unique characters, histories, and qualities that must be recognized and respected. This panel will engage the vitality of matter in art at a time in which truths put forth in meta-narratives of colonialism and free-market fundamentalism are beginning to crumble. The New Materialist turn can be seen as a creative move away from anthropocentric conceptions of nature, a move that acknowledges how "being human" essentially is a collaborative process where other forms of life and non-life play defining roles. 79 views
Petrič’s artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, an... more Petrič’s artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, and critically examines the limits of anthropocentrism via multi-species endeavours. She envisions artistic experiments that enact strange relations to reveal the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Her work revolves around the reconstruction and re-appropriation of scientific methodology in the context of cultural phenomena, while working towards an egalitarian and critical discourse between the professional and public spheres. Petrič received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria). 40 views
'The Hissing Folly' is a collaborative, multidisciplinary artwork by Cole Swanson that employs in... more 'The Hissing Folly' is a collaborative, multidisciplinary artwork by Cole Swanson that employs invasive phragmites, or European common reed (Phragmites australis subs. australis), in both its material construction and critical foundation. This reflection on the artwork and its referents demonstrates how the organism acts as a signifier for imperial folly and its role in ecological collapse; conversely, the presence of common reed in both ancient and modern artistic narratives posits that the regeneration of natural systems relies centrally on the disabling of empires in their various forms.
Cole Swanson talks to Giovanni Aloi about this project and the role plants play in his practice. Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. His practice considers interspecies relationships and complex, coevolutionary systems. 13 views
Randy Malamud presents his new book ‘Strange Bright Blooms’ published by Reaktion Books.
Flow... more Randy Malamud presents his new book ‘Strange Bright Blooms’ published by Reaktion Books.
Flowers brighten our homes, our parties, and our rituals with incomparable notes of natural beauty, but the “nature” in these displays is tamed and conscribed. Randy Malamud seeks to understand the transplanted nature of cut flowers—of our relationship with them and the careful curation of their very existence. It is a picaresque, unpredictable ramble through the world of flowers, but also the world itself, exploring painting, murals, fashion, public art, glass flowers, pressed flowers, flowery church hats, weaponized flowers, deconstructed flowers, flower power, and much more.
Randy Malamud is Regents’ Professor of English at Georgia State University. He has written eleven books, including Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity, The Importance of Elsewhere: The Globalist Humanist Tourist, and Email. 46 views
This short video is a creative response to Aldo Leopold's 1949 ‘A Sand County Almanac’ commissio... more This short video is a creative response to Aldo Leopold's 1949 ‘A Sand County Almanac’ commissioned by 'Nature Art and Habitat', an Eco-laboratory of Multidisciplinary Practices that looks at the relationship between nature and culture. The video was presented at the “Coexistence: Interdependence Between Species” symposium held on April 17th, 2021 504 views
How do practices of land acknowledgment that honor deep historical connections of Indigenous peop... more How do practices of land acknowledgment that honor deep historical connections of Indigenous peoples to colonially settled territories take shape? This event brings together artists, scholars, curators, and activists to critically examine the intersections of art, activism, place, and identity.
• Artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
• Dr. John Low (OSU Newark Earthworks Center)
• Artist JeeYeun Lee (Whose Lakefront)
• Members of SAIC’s Native American and Indigenous
Students Association (NAISA)
• SAIC’s ARC Land Acknowledgment Subcommittee
• Earthly Observatory curators Giovanni Aloi and Andrew S. Yang. 169 views
This panel examines our reliance on realism
as a means through which truth about the natural worl... more This panel examines our reliance on realism
as a means through which truth about the natural world, and its assigned value, has been historically formulated. More recently, contemporary artists have been reconsidering the expressive potential of materiality in an attempt to blur notions of natural
and artificial. What is “real” if knowledge is ultimately a matter of perception or representation, and how might an ethics of observation help make sense of this question? 40 views
Luigi Ghirri, one of the undisputed pioneers of Italian photography, passed away thirty years ago... more Luigi Ghirri, one of the undisputed pioneers of Italian photography, passed away thirty years ago. Meticulously composed and deliberately dead-pan, Ghirri’s images of plants reinvent the history of botanical representation through the photographic lens. A far cry from Karl Blossfeldt’s iconic portraits of plants and the sublimity of Ansel Adam’s American wildscapes, Ghirri’s visual commentary explores the tension between nature and culture in the unsettlingly-still microcosm of northern Italian suburbia.
This talk was part of a series on Italian art and ecology commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago. 110 views
Dizzingly magical language transports the reader into the eerie world of Roku and his twin brothe... more Dizzingly magical language transports the reader into the eerie world of Roku and his twin brother, 'The Indoor Gardener'. Novelist and essayist Mandy-Suzanne Wong talks about plants, writing, and Object Oriented Ontology. 13 views
Naïve painter Antonio Ligabue has often been compared to other famous untrained artists like Henr... more Naïve painter Antonio Ligabue has often been compared to other famous untrained artists like Henri Rousseau and Vincent van Gogh. Like them, Ligabue developed a special affinity with the natural world. While living a life between nervous breakdowns and psychiatric wards, he produced an incredible body of work ranging from imaginary orientalist themes to realistically raw representations of his beloved countryside in Emilia Romagna. This lecture reconsiders Ligabue’s paintings of animals as an expression of empathy with the natural world rather than the tired mental illness cliché celebrated by art historians.
Commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago 2022 13 views
One of the more innovative artists of the Arte Povera movement, Giuseppe Penone studies the compl... more One of the more innovative artists of the Arte Povera movement, Giuseppe Penone studies the complex relation between the natural world and the body. Nearly half a century before climate change became our concern, he sought to renegotiate our state of human alienation from the natural world. This presentation explores Penone‘s focus on vulnerability and the biographical symbols of his ecological mythologies.
Commissioned by The Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago 73 views
Diana Scherer’s work examines the boundaries between plant culture and nature. For the past few y... more Diana Scherer’s work examines the boundaries between plant culture and nature. For the past few years, her fascination has been focused on the dynamics of underground plant parts. Scherer has been interested in the root system, with its hidden, underground processes. Her long-term project 'Exercises in Rootsystem Domestication' originated as an art project with an intuitive approach has also developed into innovative material research. Working on this project Scherer shifts between disciplines, from design to art, craft, and science. 212 views
Who are the contemporary protagonists of the ecological scene in Italy? What are the central topi... more Who are the contemporary protagonists of the ecological scene in Italy? What are the central topics and concerns? From street art to the gallery space, this lecture presents an overview of the avant-garde Italian artists whose work challenges preconceived notions of ecology and nature in order to sensitize and mobilize audiences. We look at the work of Francesco Simeti, Eugenio Tibaldi, Iena Cruz, Giorgia Lupi, and Andreco.
Presentation commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago, 2022 42 views
A Keynote Speech delivered at Parco Arte Vivente, Torino, for the symposium 'Soils Matter'. The p... more A Keynote Speech delivered at Parco Arte Vivente, Torino, for the symposium 'Soils Matter'. The presentation considers the work of many artists working with soil, land, and cartography to reconsider our fraught relationship with colonialist pasts and our unsustainable present. 7 views
A book launch panel on the subject of posthumanism with contributions by Francesca Ferrando, Ken ... more A book launch panel on the subject of posthumanism with contributions by Francesca Ferrando, Ken Rinaldo, and Doo Sung Yoo in conversation with Giovanni Aloi and Susan McHugh. 46 views
Giovanni Aloi in conversation on nature and ecology in Italian arts, with internationally renowne... more Giovanni Aloi in conversation on nature and ecology in Italian arts, with internationally renowned Italian artist, Andrea Conte. Since 2000 Andrea Conte has been researching across the fields of science, ecology, activism, urbanism, anthropology, philosophy, biology, and symbolism. His practice aims to raise awareness of climate change and the interconnectedness that binds us humans to plants, animals and ecosystems. 17 views
Giovanni Aloi in conversation with mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of the best selling book '... more Giovanni Aloi in conversation with mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of the best selling book 'Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures'. We will talk about his book and focus on plant-fungi relations.
In 'Entangled Life', Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. His vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
In this conversation, Sheldrake focuses on the important, and up until recently overlooked, relationship between plants and fungi. 117 views
Plenary contributions by Giovanni Aloi (in Italian) and Timothy Morton (in English) with final di... more Plenary contributions by Giovanni Aloi (in Italian) and Timothy Morton (in English) with final discussion (in English) at Green Studies: Traiettorie di Ricerca IUAV University, Venice, 06/13/2022
Giovanni Aloi's talk is first. Morton's talk begins at 46:00 minutes
The discussion in English begins at 1:40:20 18 views
Botanical Speculations
'Composting in the Herbarium'
Melissa Oresky and Keith Pluymers
in conver... more Botanical Speculations
'Composting in the Herbarium'
Melissa Oresky and Keith Pluymers
in conversation with Giovanni Aloi
September 17th
Since the early modern period, European and Euro-American botanists and natural historians have used printed books and herbarium specimens to teach practitioners how to see plants. These scientific modes of vision, however, obscured other ways of knowing and looking. Artist Melissa Oresky and historian Keith Pluymers discuss the pasts of and potential futures for these visual materials and Oresky’s production of the artist’s book Finder (2020). Together they reimagine these materials without forgetting their histories through the process of composting.
Melissa Oresky is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Illinois State University.
Keith Pluymers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Illinois State University. 32 views
Books by Giovanni Aloi
Lucian Freud Plant Portraits , 2022
Lucian Freud was not a conventional gardener, but he had a close and respectful relationship with... more Lucian Freud was not a conventional gardener, but he had a close and respectful relationship with plants. From his rarely-seen Berlin childhood drawings to his garden in Notting Hill, and the straggly potted plants that followed him from home to home throughout his life, the master of the modern nude was also a prolific painter of plants and gardens.
This catalogue accompanying the exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits explores how integral plants were to Freud’s work, shedding light on his ability to capture their elusive essence in with the same gritty, unfiltered style as his human subjects.
Illustrated with examples of Freud’s plant paintings and etchings, this catalogue includes an introduction by Garden Museum curator Emma House and an essay by curator Giovanni Aloi, as well as interviews with Freud’s longtime studio assistant David Dawson, and daughter Annie Freud.
Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art, 2018
Why Look at Plants? proposes a thought-provoking and fascinating look into the emerging cultura... more Why Look at Plants? proposes a thought-provoking and fascinating look into the emerging cultural politics of plant-presence in contemporary art. Through the original contributions of artists, scholars, and curators who have creatively engaged with the ultimate otherness of plants in their work, this volume maps and problematizes new intra-active, agential interconnectedness involving human-non-human biosystems central to artistic and philosophical discourses of the Anthropocene.
Plant’s fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and ontological crisis. Why Look at Plants? challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies.
Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles award in Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)
Lawn, 2025
This is the introduction and first chapter of 'Lawn' published by Bloomsbury (2025) as part of th... more This is the introduction and first chapter of 'Lawn' published by Bloomsbury (2025) as part of the Object Lessons series.
A quintessential feature in Western gardens and landscaping, the lawn is now at the center of a climate change controversy. The large carbon footprint maintenance, its unquenchable thirst for fertilizers, weedkillers, and water, and the notorious unfriendliness towards all forms of wildlife have recently attracted criticism and even spurred an anti-lawn movement.
Lawn untangles the colonial-capitalist threads that keep our passion for mown grass alive despite mounting evidence that we'd be better off without it. The lawn is aesthetically and ideologically versatile. From museums and hospitals to corporate headquarters and university campuses, it has become the verdant lingua franca of institutions of all kinds. Its formal homogeneity and neatness imply reliability, constancy, and solicit our trust. But beneath the lawn lies a stratification of intricate ideological and ecological issues that over time have come to define our conception of nature.
Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art, 2025
This file features the introduction and first chapter of 'Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Chang... more This file features the introduction and first chapter of 'Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art' recently published by Getty, 2025.
Botanical Revolutions presents a global history of plants in art, focusing on the crucial moments that signaled the formation of new movements and styles, as well as the creation of media that could not have occurred without the involvement of and interaction with the vegetal world. In this fascinating and beautifully illustrated book, author Giovanni Aloi delves deeply into the history and representation of plants in art, advocates for a change in our relationship with the botanical world, and presents an alternative history of art that foregrounds the truly indispensable contributions of plants.
Last draft. Final, altered version published in the exhibition catalog 'Everybody Talks About the... more Last draft. Final, altered version published in the exhibition catalog 'Everybody Talks About the Weather', edited by Dieter Roelstraete for the Fondazione Prada, pp.270-273 in occasion of the exhibition by the same title. Venice 20.5-26.11, 2023
Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant Thinking , 2023
This is the introduction of Estado Vegetal This first book dedicated to Manuela Infante’s plant-f... more This is the introduction of Estado Vegetal This first book dedicated to Manuela Infante’s plant-focused performance by the same title. It features eight essays by scholars, poets, and artists whose practices draw from research fields as disparate as new materialism, anthropogenic feminism, queer studies, and speculative realism. Including an interview with Infante, the full playscript, and stills from the performance, Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking reveals the roles that plants in art can play in productively reconfiguring human–nonhuman relations within current anthropogenic perspectives.
Introduction
Giovanni Aloi
The Right of the Other: Interpretation in Four Acts
Michael Marder
Thinking in the World: Estado Vegetal as Thought-Apparatus
Maaike Bleeker
Theatre as Thinking, Art as Nonknowledge
Lucy Cotter
Vegetal Mythologies: Potted Plants and Storymaking
Giovanni Aloi
Attending to “Plantness” in Estado Vegetal
Dawn Sanders
“I Can’t Move”: Plants and the Politics of Mobility in Estado Vegetal
Catriona Sandilands and Prudence Gibson
Feminist Structures: Polyphonic Networks
Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem
Soledad: After Estado Vegetal
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
In Conversation
Manuela Infante and Giovanni Aloi
Estado Vegetal
Manuela Infante with Marcela Salinas
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art, 2023
This is the introduction to the edited volume 'Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art'. The b... more This is the introduction to the edited volume 'Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art'. The book considers such topics as the presence of plants in the history of philosophy, the shifting status of plants in various traditions, what it means to make art with growing life-forms, and whether or not plants have moral standing. In an experimental vegetal arrangement, the reader presents some of the most influential writing on plants, philosophy, and the arts, together with provocative new contributions, as well as interviews with groundbreaking contemporary artists whose work has greatly enhanced our appreciation of vegetal being.
Please note that this is NOT the final proof that went into press, so some typos or other minor inaccuracies might be present.
Contributors:
Giovanni Aloi, Maria Theresa Alves, Marlene Atleo, Monica Bakke, Baracco + Wright, Emily Blackmer, Jodi Brandt, Teresa Castro, Dan Choffnes, Mark Dion, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Braden Elliott, Monica Gagliano, Elaine Gan, Prudence Gibson, Manuela Infante, Luce Irigaray, Jonathon Keats, Zayaan Khan, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Eduardo Kohn, Wangari Maathai, Stefano Mancuso, Michael Marder, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Elaine Miller, Samaneh Moafi, Uriel Orlow, Mark Payne, Allegra Pesenti, Špela Petrič, Michael Pollan, Darren Ranco, Nicholas J. Reo, Angela Roothaan, Marcela Salinas, Catriona A. H. Sandilands, Diana Scherer, Elisabeth E. Schussler, Vandana Shiva, Linda Tegg, Krista Tippet, Anthony Trewavas, Alessandra Viola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, James H. Wandersee, Lois Weinberger, Kyle Whyte, David Wood, Anicka Yi
Why Look at Plants, 2019
Chapter #1 from 'Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art' published by Br... more Chapter #1 from 'Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art' published by Brill, 2019. The essay deconstructs the aesthetic paradigms that have underpinned and perpetuated the separation of nature in culture through the representation of forests in Western art from the middle ages to today.
Speculative Taxidermy, 2018
An art historical genealogy mapping the emergence of new materialities in Western art from Cubism... more An art historical genealogy mapping the emergence of new materialities in Western art from Cubism to Dada, and Surrealism to provide a sound context in which to theorize the presence of taxidermy in contemporary art.
Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, 2022
What is a plant portrait? How does it differ from the picture of a plant?
About his painting 'Tw... more What is a plant portrait? How does it differ from the picture of a plant?
About his painting 'Two Plants', Lucian Freud said: “They are lots of little portraits of leaves, lots and lots of them, starting with them rather robust in the middle—greeny-blue and cream—and getting more yellow and broken”.
Drawing from the research for his book 'Lucian Freud Herbarium' (2019, Prestel) and informed by the exhibition 'Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits' which he guest curated for the Garden Museum in London, Aloi explores Freud’s ability to tease out the individual character of the plants he painted.
This is the main essay published in the exhibition catalog for the exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits held at the Garden Museum in London between October 13th 2023 and March 5th 2024. The catalog also features previously unpublished conversations with poet and artist Annie Freud and Freud's assistant David Dawson. Buy the catalog here: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/product/catalogue-lucian-freud-plant-portraits/
Why look at Plants, 2018
A chapter from 'Why look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art', focuses on plan... more A chapter from 'Why look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art', focuses on plants in contemporary art, the power relations established in the gallery space, and the representational pitfalls that these might entail.
Posthumanism in Art and Science, 2021
The co-authored introduction to 'Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader' published by Columbia... more The co-authored introduction to 'Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader' published by Columbia University Press in 2021.
Botanical Speculations, 2018
This book gathers the proceedings of the symposium held in September 2017 at the School of the Ar... more This book gathers the proceedings of the symposium held in September 2017 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Botanical Speculations is the result of a year and half of research and preparation among faculty and students attending undergraduate and graduate courses at the school. It emerged from shared interests for the botanical world among faculty and students and it paved the way for more non-human/posthuman/Anthropocene dialogues to unravel.
Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene, 2017
Chapter 3, “Dioramas: Power, Realism, and Decorum” is a chapter from 'Speculative Taxidermy'.This... more Chapter 3, “Dioramas: Power, Realism, and Decorum” is a chapter from 'Speculative Taxidermy'.This chapter traces a genealogy of realism in art and natural history, problematizing the lifelike aesthetics of taxidermy and dioramas. The simultaneous emergence of photography and taxidermy as epistemic tools of natural history and science is in this context problem- atized by the discursive and technical parallelisms that led taxidermy to transcend the ethical-epistemic, mechanical objectivity of scientific epistemology in the nineteenth century. Thereby, notions of stillness, decorum, and ideology become central to a revisitation of Donna Haraway’s positioning of taxidermy as sedimentation of patriarchal discourses of imperialist conquest and subjugation. This chapter is bookended by Mark Dion’s anti-diorama Landfill (1999) and Oleg Kulik’s New Paradise Series (2000–2001). In different ways, both artists engage with forms of speculative aesthetics designed to address anthropogenic moments of crisis in relation to classical registers of realism.
Why Look at Plants? , 2019
"Plant fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the... more "Plant fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. This book argues that the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise our relationship with plants at a time of deep ecological crisis. 'Why Look at Plants?' challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies".
https://brill.com/view/title/33086
Botanical Speculations: Plants in Contemporary Art , 2018
Ground-breaking scientific research and new philosophical perspectives are challenging our anthro... more Ground-breaking scientific research and new philosophical perspectives are challenging our anthropocentric cultural assumptions of the vegetal world.
As humanity begins to grapple with the urgency imposed by climate change, reconsidering human/plant relationships becomes essential to grant a sustainable future on this planet. It is in this context that a multifaceted approach to plant-life can reveal the importance of ecological interconnectedness and lead to a more nuanced consideration of the variety of living organisms and ecosystems with which we share the planet.
In Botanical Speculations, researchers, artists, art historians, and activists collaboratively map the uncharted territories of new forms of botanical knowledge. This book emerges from a symposium held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in September 2017, and capitalizes on contemporary art’s ability to productively unhinge scientific theories and certainties in order to help us reconsider unquestioned beliefs about this living world
Animal: Exploring the Zoological World is a visually stunning and broad-ranging survey that explo... more Animal: Exploring the Zoological World is a visually stunning and broad-ranging survey that explores and celebrates humankind's ongoing fascination with animals. Since our very first moments on Earth, we have been compelled to make images of the curious beasts around us - whether as sources of food, danger, wonder, power, scientific significance or companionship. This carefully curated selection of images, chosen by an international panel of experts, delves into our shared past to tell the story of animal life.
From the first cave paintings, extraordinary medieval bestiaries and exquisite scientific illustration, to iconic paintings, contemporary artworks and the incredible technological advancements that will shape our futures together, the huge range of works reflects the beauty and variety of animals themselves - including butterflies, hummingbirds, bats, frogs, tigers, dogs, jellyfish, spiders and elephants, to name a few.
Arranged in a curated and thought-provoking sequence, this engaging compilation includes iconic works by some of the great names in zoology, such as Conrad Gesner, Charles Darwin and John James Audubon, as well as celebrated artists and photographers, indigenous cultures and lesser-known figures who have made important contributions to the study and representation of animals throughout history.
Free extract from my latest book!
In 'Speculative Taxidermy', Aloi gives us a contact zone betwe... more Free extract from my latest book!
In 'Speculative Taxidermy', Aloi gives us a contact zone between humans and animality, art and the nonhuman. While there are a number of recent works on taxidermy, this is the book many of us have been waiting for—broad-ranging, keen-eyed, insightful, and informed by animal studies as well as art history.
Ron Broglio, Arizona State University
Book Reviews by Giovanni Aloi
Gothic Nature Journal, 2021
A review of 'Speculative Taxidermy' in the 'Gothic Nature Journal'
Blouinartinfo, 2019
In "Lucian Freud Herbarium," a new book by the art historian Giovanni Aloi, the author offers an ... more In "Lucian Freud Herbarium," a new book by the art historian Giovanni Aloi, the author offers an original analysis of this much-discussed painting, drawing out the full ambivalence of the relationship between man and pot plant. This is one of many great readings in Aloi's thorough and abundantly illustrated survey of Freud's paintings of plants. As with all good scholarly works, the reader is left so convinced of the value of the subject matter that one is surprised it hasn't garnered more critical attention already.
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Videos by Giovanni Aloi
Cole Swanson talks to Giovanni Aloi about this project and the role plants play in his practice. Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. His practice considers interspecies relationships and complex, coevolutionary systems.
Flowers brighten our homes, our parties, and our rituals with incomparable notes of natural beauty, but the “nature” in these displays is tamed and conscribed. Randy Malamud seeks to understand the transplanted nature of cut flowers—of our relationship with them and the careful curation of their very existence. It is a picaresque, unpredictable ramble through the world of flowers, but also the world itself, exploring painting, murals, fashion, public art, glass flowers, pressed flowers, flowery church hats, weaponized flowers, deconstructed flowers, flower power, and much more.
Randy Malamud is Regents’ Professor of English at Georgia State University. He has written eleven books, including Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity, The Importance of Elsewhere: The Globalist Humanist Tourist, and Email.
• Artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
• Dr. John Low (OSU Newark Earthworks Center)
• Artist JeeYeun Lee (Whose Lakefront)
• Members of SAIC’s Native American and Indigenous
Students Association (NAISA)
• SAIC’s ARC Land Acknowledgment Subcommittee
• Earthly Observatory curators Giovanni Aloi and Andrew S. Yang.
as a means through which truth about the natural world, and its assigned value, has been historically formulated. More recently, contemporary artists have been reconsidering the expressive potential of materiality in an attempt to blur notions of natural
and artificial. What is “real” if knowledge is ultimately a matter of perception or representation, and how might an ethics of observation help make sense of this question?
This talk was part of a series on Italian art and ecology commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago.
Commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago 2022
Commissioned by The Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago
Presentation commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago, 2022
In 'Entangled Life', Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. His vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
In this conversation, Sheldrake focuses on the important, and up until recently overlooked, relationship between plants and fungi.
Giovanni Aloi's talk is first. Morton's talk begins at 46:00 minutes
The discussion in English begins at 1:40:20
'Composting in the Herbarium'
Melissa Oresky and Keith Pluymers
in conversation with Giovanni Aloi
September 17th
Since the early modern period, European and Euro-American botanists and natural historians have used printed books and herbarium specimens to teach practitioners how to see plants. These scientific modes of vision, however, obscured other ways of knowing and looking. Artist Melissa Oresky and historian Keith Pluymers discuss the pasts of and potential futures for these visual materials and Oresky’s production of the artist’s book Finder (2020). Together they reimagine these materials without forgetting their histories through the process of composting.
Melissa Oresky is a Professor of Painting and Drawing at Illinois State University.
Keith Pluymers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Illinois State University.
Books by Giovanni Aloi
This catalogue accompanying the exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits explores how integral plants were to Freud’s work, shedding light on his ability to capture their elusive essence in with the same gritty, unfiltered style as his human subjects.
Illustrated with examples of Freud’s plant paintings and etchings, this catalogue includes an introduction by Garden Museum curator Emma House and an essay by curator Giovanni Aloi, as well as interviews with Freud’s longtime studio assistant David Dawson, and daughter Annie Freud.
Plant’s fixity, perceived passivity, and resilient silence have relegated the vegetal world to the cultural background of human civilization. However, the recent emergence of plants in the gallery space constitutes a wake-up-call to reappraise this relationship at a time of deep ecological and ontological crisis. Why Look at Plants? challenges readers’ pre-established notions through a diverse gathering of insights, stories, experiences, perspectives, and arguments encompassing multiple disciplines, media, and methodologies.
Winner of the 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles award in Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)
A quintessential feature in Western gardens and landscaping, the lawn is now at the center of a climate change controversy. The large carbon footprint maintenance, its unquenchable thirst for fertilizers, weedkillers, and water, and the notorious unfriendliness towards all forms of wildlife have recently attracted criticism and even spurred an anti-lawn movement.
Lawn untangles the colonial-capitalist threads that keep our passion for mown grass alive despite mounting evidence that we'd be better off without it. The lawn is aesthetically and ideologically versatile. From museums and hospitals to corporate headquarters and university campuses, it has become the verdant lingua franca of institutions of all kinds. Its formal homogeneity and neatness imply reliability, constancy, and solicit our trust. But beneath the lawn lies a stratification of intricate ideological and ecological issues that over time have come to define our conception of nature.
Botanical Revolutions presents a global history of plants in art, focusing on the crucial moments that signaled the formation of new movements and styles, as well as the creation of media that could not have occurred without the involvement of and interaction with the vegetal world. In this fascinating and beautifully illustrated book, author Giovanni Aloi delves deeply into the history and representation of plants in art, advocates for a change in our relationship with the botanical world, and presents an alternative history of art that foregrounds the truly indispensable contributions of plants.
Introduction
Giovanni Aloi
The Right of the Other: Interpretation in Four Acts
Michael Marder
Thinking in the World: Estado Vegetal as Thought-Apparatus
Maaike Bleeker
Theatre as Thinking, Art as Nonknowledge
Lucy Cotter
Vegetal Mythologies: Potted Plants and Storymaking
Giovanni Aloi
Attending to “Plantness” in Estado Vegetal
Dawn Sanders
“I Can’t Move”: Plants and the Politics of Mobility in Estado Vegetal
Catriona Sandilands and Prudence Gibson
Feminist Structures: Polyphonic Networks
Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem
Soledad: After Estado Vegetal
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
In Conversation
Manuela Infante and Giovanni Aloi
Estado Vegetal
Manuela Infante with Marcela Salinas
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
Please note that this is NOT the final proof that went into press, so some typos or other minor inaccuracies might be present.
Contributors:
Giovanni Aloi, Maria Theresa Alves, Marlene Atleo, Monica Bakke, Baracco + Wright, Emily Blackmer, Jodi Brandt, Teresa Castro, Dan Choffnes, Mark Dion, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Braden Elliott, Monica Gagliano, Elaine Gan, Prudence Gibson, Manuela Infante, Luce Irigaray, Jonathon Keats, Zayaan Khan, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Eduardo Kohn, Wangari Maathai, Stefano Mancuso, Michael Marder, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Elaine Miller, Samaneh Moafi, Uriel Orlow, Mark Payne, Allegra Pesenti, Špela Petrič, Michael Pollan, Darren Ranco, Nicholas J. Reo, Angela Roothaan, Marcela Salinas, Catriona A. H. Sandilands, Diana Scherer, Elisabeth E. Schussler, Vandana Shiva, Linda Tegg, Krista Tippet, Anthony Trewavas, Alessandra Viola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, James H. Wandersee, Lois Weinberger, Kyle Whyte, David Wood, Anicka Yi
About his painting 'Two Plants', Lucian Freud said: “They are lots of little portraits of leaves, lots and lots of them, starting with them rather robust in the middle—greeny-blue and cream—and getting more yellow and broken”.
Drawing from the research for his book 'Lucian Freud Herbarium' (2019, Prestel) and informed by the exhibition 'Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits' which he guest curated for the Garden Museum in London, Aloi explores Freud’s ability to tease out the individual character of the plants he painted.
This is the main essay published in the exhibition catalog for the exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits held at the Garden Museum in London between October 13th 2023 and March 5th 2024. The catalog also features previously unpublished conversations with poet and artist Annie Freud and Freud's assistant David Dawson. Buy the catalog here: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/product/catalogue-lucian-freud-plant-portraits/
https://brill.com/view/title/33086
As humanity begins to grapple with the urgency imposed by climate change, reconsidering human/plant relationships becomes essential to grant a sustainable future on this planet. It is in this context that a multifaceted approach to plant-life can reveal the importance of ecological interconnectedness and lead to a more nuanced consideration of the variety of living organisms and ecosystems with which we share the planet.
In Botanical Speculations, researchers, artists, art historians, and activists collaboratively map the uncharted territories of new forms of botanical knowledge. This book emerges from a symposium held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in September 2017, and capitalizes on contemporary art’s ability to productively unhinge scientific theories and certainties in order to help us reconsider unquestioned beliefs about this living world
From the first cave paintings, extraordinary medieval bestiaries and exquisite scientific illustration, to iconic paintings, contemporary artworks and the incredible technological advancements that will shape our futures together, the huge range of works reflects the beauty and variety of animals themselves - including butterflies, hummingbirds, bats, frogs, tigers, dogs, jellyfish, spiders and elephants, to name a few.
Arranged in a curated and thought-provoking sequence, this engaging compilation includes iconic works by some of the great names in zoology, such as Conrad Gesner, Charles Darwin and John James Audubon, as well as celebrated artists and photographers, indigenous cultures and lesser-known figures who have made important contributions to the study and representation of animals throughout history.
In 'Speculative Taxidermy', Aloi gives us a contact zone between humans and animality, art and the nonhuman. While there are a number of recent works on taxidermy, this is the book many of us have been waiting for—broad-ranging, keen-eyed, insightful, and informed by animal studies as well as art history.
Ron Broglio, Arizona State University
Book Reviews by Giovanni Aloi