Knowledge Is a Garden

With works by Maria Eichhorn, Susan Hiller, General Idea, Uriel Orlow and others.

The exhibition Knowledge Is a Garden presents Uriel Orlow's elaborate three-part video installation Theatrum Botanicum Trilogy (2016-2018) for the first time since it became part of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst collection. In addition, the artist was invited to place his works based on his own artistic interests in dialogue with works from the collection. His focus is mainly on artistic explorations of «wilful non-knowledge» (agnotology). What knowledge is permitted in the course of global power relations, what is suppressed or hidden? What knowledge is unlawfully acquired? How is knowledge lost? What is a knowledge economy?

These questions are directly related to the Theatrum Botanicum Trilogy (2016-2018) and Learning from Artemisia (2020) – Orlow's second work to be shown in the exhibition. Both video installations are about plants as silent witnesses to human power relations. Learning from Artemisia tells the story of the plant Artemisia afra, which is successfully used in indigenous medicine as a malaria prophylactic. Nevertheless, the drug is not recommended as a cure by western agencies, despite studies proving its worth to the global pharmaceutical industry. This example is just one of many in which the botanical world has played an active role in political relationships over the centuries.

Further loaned items on the subject complement Orlow's video installations and the selection of works from the collection.