Bringing together a community of artists, botanists, and philosophers, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain echoes the latest scientific research that sheds new light on trees. Organized around several large ensembles of works, Trees gives voice to numerous figures who, through their aesthetic or scientific journey, have developed a strong, intimate link with trees, thereby revealing the beauty and biological wealth of these great protagonists of the living world, threatened today with large-scale deforestation.

Omnipresent, essential to life, the little-known living organisms that are trees have begun to generate a growing interest on behalf of the public, as evidenced by the international success of several recent books and movies devoted to the subject. Underestimated by biologists for a long time—like the entirety of the plant kingdom—in recent years they have been the subject of scientific discoveries that have allowed us to see these organisms in a new light. Interestingly, some of these are amongst the oldest and largest members of this community of living things. Boasting sensory and motor skills, capable of communication, existing in symbiosis with other species and the climate, trees are equipped with unexpected faculties whose discovery confirms what traditional knowledge has long since incorporated. The veil has been lifted on a fascinating world—the world of ‘plant intelligence’—which could be the answer to many of today’s technological and environmental problems.

Artists : Bruce Albert, Grga Basic, Stefano Boeri, Jake Bryant, Johanna Calle, Alex Cerveny, Ehuana Yaira, John Gerrard, Francis Hallé, Hu Liu, Huang Yong Ping, Fabrice Hyber, Luc Jacquet, Joseca, Kalepi Sanöma, Mahmoud Khan, Cesare Leonardi, François-Michel Le Tourneau, Stefano Mancuso, Sebastián Mejía, Santídio Pereira, Jivya Soma Mashe, Jérôme Schlomoff, Franca Stagi, Afonso Tostes, Adriana Varejão, Cássio Vasconcellos, Luiz Zerbini and Zhang Enli.

Published on the occasion of the 2019 exhibition at Fondation Cartier.