Botanical Memories: On Healing and Care

Participating artists: Lisa Biedlingmaier, Sonia Gomes, Maëlle Gross, Viola Poli, Lena Maria Thüring, Maja Renn, Haroon Mirza & Helga Dóróthea Fannon, Giulia Essyad, Isabell Bullerschen, Anthea Oestreicher, Luc Müller, Olga Kokcharova.

The exhibition Botanical Memories: On Healing and Care unfolds across the Old and New Botanical Gardens in Zurich in collaboration with the University of Zurich. It explores local traditions of medicinal plant knowledge and considers how healing, care, and memory are intertwined. The gardens themselves become living archives: the historic Old Botanical Garden houses the Gessner Herb Garden, dedicated to Conrad Gessner and the history of medicinal plant lore, while the New Botanical Garden is a contemporary site of botanical research, cultivation, and ecological inquiry. Rooted in scientific research at the Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich, the exhibition brings these traditions into conversation with contemporary artistic research and lived practices.

At its centre is a form of knowledge passed down through generations by herbalists, healers, midwives, and communities. It emerges through experience, close contact with plants, and lived connections within the more-than-human world.

From the early modern period (approximately the 16th to 18th centuries) onwards, with the professionalization of medicine and the growing authority of scientific institutions, these traditions were increasingly regulated, devalued, and in many cases displaced. Women in particular, including midwives and healers, came under intensified control by governing bodies and church authorities. Their practices were often restricted or delegitimized. This dynamic reached an extreme form during the witch trials of this period. In Switzerland, witch persecutions were particularly widespread and counted among the highest rates of trials and executions in Europe. Knowledge of plants, bodies, and care was treated as a threat and violently suppressed.

The regulation of expertise and customs that shaped this era has not disappeared, but continues in transformed ways in present-day forms of gender-based violence. While violence during this period was publicly negotiated and sanctioned, it was at the same time embedded in social and neighborly relations. Today, it manifests increasingly within the supposedly private sphere, particularly in the context of intimate partnerships, without losing its broader societal dimension. The theorist Silvia Federici describes this historical rupture as an expropriation of knowledge and bodily autonomy, a transformation whose effects continue into the present.

The artists reflect on these ruptures and trace the persistence of marginalized communities, prompting questions around who defines plants and how knowledge is generated.

Medicinal plant know-how is not an object, but a form of action. Botanical Memories takes these ruptures as a point of departure without framing them as a closed past. Instead, they continue to resonate today in questions of whose knowledge is recognized, who has access to it, and which forms of care remain visible or invisible. 

Across the Old and New Botanical Gardens, visitors encounter immersive installations, textile and sound works, as well as performances and workshops. Together, these works approach healing as a collective, social, and ecological practice grounded in attention, sharing, and interconnection. The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider medicinal plant knowledge not as a resource, but as a lived connection between bodies, plants, and memory.

WE ARE AIA I Awareness in Art is an independent cultural institution based in Zurich, founded in 2021 by Martina Huber at the Löwenbräu Contemporary Art Center. Co-created by a growing network of collaborators, artists, researchers, and local knowledge keepers, AIA is a platform for encounter, dialogue, and collective imagination. It develops exhibitions, performances, educational initiatives, and transdisciplinary projects that connect artistic research with scientific, local, and lived knowledge. AIA creates space for shared enquiry and international exchange around urgent societal and environmental issues. At WE ARE AIA, Martina is supported by the curatorial team consisting of Joslyne Ramazani Ohoka, Marina Müller, Julian Giacomelli, and Bettina Rohr, as well as by art mediator Alexandra Eichenauer. weareaia.art

Botanical Garden I UZH The Botanical Garden is an oasis of plant diversity from around the world. Among the garden’s central missions are the conservation of species and the promotion, strengthening, and visibility of the relationships between plants and people. The vision of the Botanical Garden Zurich is to be a leading place of teaching and learning about plant diversity in Switzerland, thereby making a socially relevant contribution. Already today, the garden welcomes around 100,000 visitors each year. Across an area of 5.6 hectares, more than 8,000 plant species from various recreated habitats are on display. In the heart of Zurich’s city center, along the Schanzengraben, lies the Old Botanical Garden of Zurich, which was established in the 1830s. The garden quickly expanded and eventually had to be relocated. Since 1977, it has been situated in Zurich’s Seefeld district.

Events
Exhibition opening (Vernissage): May 28, 6–8:30pm
Old Botanical Garden UZH, Pelikanstrasse 40, 8001 Zürich
Register here

Plants as Medicine—Diversity in Switzerland: June 4–October 11, 2026
New Botanical Garden UZH, Zollikerstrasse 107, 8008 Zürich

Zurich Art Weekend
Performance Somatic Ceremony: June 13, 3:45–4:15pm
By Haroon Mirza and Helga Dóróthea Fannon. Old Botanical Garden UZH: Pelikanstrasse 40, 8001 Zürich
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SAVVY Contemporary x WE ARE AIA: June 13, 3:30–3:00pm
Talk on collaboration and the future of botanical gardens as places of encounter and dialogue. 
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Artist talk: June 14, 1–2pm
With Jeremy Narby and Isabell Bullerschen: 1–2pm (CEST time). New Botanical Garden UZH Zollikerstrasse 107, 8008 Zürich.
Register here