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鈥淚T鈥檚 very chaotic,鈥� says Luiz Zerbini, gesturing at his huge, colourful and joyful canvases crammed with the leaves, fruit and trunks of trees native to his home, Brazil. At first glance, his art, on show , appears to celebrate the riots of nature, free of people. But a closer inspection reveals humanity鈥檚 fingerprints 鈥� from a digger lifting a palm tree in the picture above (Coisas do Mundo) to plastic bottles on sticks.
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鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a reflection of the place I live. Rio de Janeiro has a huge forest just inside of the city. Everything is mixed. It鈥檚 an urban landscape, but it鈥檚 really full of nature,鈥� says Zerbini.
Unsurprisingly for a self-professed lover of plants, Zerbini despairs at the accelerating deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon under President Jair Bolsonaro. 鈥淲e are living in a terrible time,鈥� he says. Bolsonaro鈥檚听 plan to grow the economy by clearing forest to grow soya is 鈥渧ery stupid鈥�, he argues, because the country鈥檚 riches are in its natural world.
Our very different relationships with trees are at the heart of听 Fondation Cartier鈥檚 exhibition. Some are humorous, like Sebastian Mejia鈥檚 photographs, which show the strange ways we fit trees into our cities. In one (below) a palm emerges through the roof of a petrol station in Chile.
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The show鈥檚 roots are in science, reflecting over 30 years of growing understanding of special kind of intelligence that trees possess, and of their importance to the world as climate regulators. 鈥淭he moment we are destroying most of the forest and planet is the moment we have the real knowledge of plants and trees,鈥� says curator Bruce Albert.
His hopes the exhibition will help us change how we think about trees 鈥� which explains the emphasis on thought-provoking questions and the celebratory, rather than the doom-laden. 鈥淐rying about deforestation won鈥檛 change much,鈥� says Albert.
Even so, Trees does not shy away from the magnitude of our impact. Take Exit by architects DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO, which uses听 visualisations of disappearing forest maps layered with immersive audio of forest birds and falling trees to great effect. And then there are Nilson Pimenta鈥檚 felled Brazilian trees, painted to be eerily reminiscent of human bodies.
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A voice to nature
Elsewhere, Vasconcellos鈥檚 inkjet prints on cotton portray South American rainforests as alien, mysterious worlds, almost so rich as to be unknowable.
Another gem is a collaboration by botanist Stefano Mancuso and artist Thijs Biersteker in the gallery鈥檚 garden. There, sensors track the exposure of two trees 鈥� a horse chestnut and Turkey oak 鈥� to everything from air to noise pollution, visualising it in real-time on pulsing waves and dots on adjacent screens. 鈥淢y personal driver is to give a voice to nature,鈥� says Biersteker.
Our sometimes contradictory relationship with trees is unpacked in Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon鈥檚 Mon Arbe, a beautifully shot video of French citizens and 鈥渢heir鈥� tree. One recounts delight at moving near a plane tree 鈥� only to discover the bark it sheds is a pain.
鈥淲e discovered these people know the Latin names of trees. It makes us realise all of us have relationship with trees without being a scientist or botanists,鈥� says Nougaret.
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12 July 鈥� 10 November 2019
Fondation Cartier pour l鈥檃rt contemporain, Paris
