Symbio - Diana Scherer

In 2026, Diana Scherer will create a new installation for Art in the Atrium. Especially for this space in Museum de Fundatie Zwolle, she will create a textile work consisting of organic fabrics made from plant roots and sustainable fabrics she has designed herself. Scherer is fascinated by how the natural growth processes of plants and roots can be influenced or controlled. She uses soil, seeds, light, water and underground templates to grow organic fabrics. In this process, Scherer constantly navigates the boundary between control and chance, between natural and artificial, between art and biology. On the one hand, Symbio criticises the exploitation and control of natural systems. On the other hand, the exhibition sketches a utopian scenario in which cooperation, reciprocity and interweaving between humans and nature are central. The growth process, which is slow, unpredictable and partly uncontrollable, thus becomes a metaphor for the search for a new balance between culture and nature.

Scherer finds much of her inspiration in Charles Darwin's 1880 book The Power of Movement in Plants. In it, the famous biologist discusses the complex movements that plants can make in response to light, gravity and temperature. Darwin explains how natural selection works and how plants have repeatedly adapted to different environments in order to survive. Scherer uses this power of plants to grow her fabrics. Her work can therefore be seen as a collaboration between plant and artist.

For this monumental installation, Diana Scherer draws on Darwin's research into the movement of plants. Scherer translates his systematic measurement and drawing systems, with which he documented the growth paths of plants over time, into the patterns of her organic fabric. His characteristic drawings, composed of hundreds of lines recording bends and growth trajectories, serve as the starting point for her hybrid installation. By reinterpreting Darwin's visual logic, in which drawing and measuring coincide, a new pattern emerges that poetically depicts the natural movements of plants while reflecting Darwin's historical spirit of inquiry and methodology.

_{Diana Scherer, Farming Textiles, 2023, installation Museum Kranenburgh, photo Michel Claus}

Symbiosis between organic material and textiles
Scherer allows root structures to grow together with fabrics she has developed herself. In Symbio, she investigates how these two systems support, reinforce or, conversely, hinder each other. The man-made fabric functions as a carrier, framework and counterpart for the plant. This continuous interaction gives rise to a new, hybrid material language, in which growing and weaving are no longer separate processes, but part of a single dynamic system.

Diana Scherer (Launingen, Germany, 1971) lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied fine art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Scherer creates botanical installations, objects, textiles and photography and is a pioneer in biotechnological art. Recent exhibitions include Soil, Somerset House, London, UK (2025), Manifesta 15 Metropolitana, Barcelona, ES (2024), Reset Now, Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE (2024), Farming Textiles, Museum Kranenburgh, NL (2023), 23rd Biennale Sydney, AU (2022) and Intelligence of Plants, Frankfurter Kunstverein, DE (2021). Scherer's work is included in several collections, including those of the Victoria & Albert Museum London, Design Society Shenzhen, FOAM Amsterdam, Museum Arnhem, Centraal Museum Utrecht and Bijzondere Collecties Leiden.

Art in the Atrium
Under the banner of Art in the Atrium, Museum de Fundatie commissions an artist each year to create a new work especially for the atrium of the museum in Zwolle. This gives rise to new forms of art that greet visitors as soon as they enter. Previous editions of Art in the Atrium: Ruthi Helbitz Cohen (2023), Cristina Flores Pescorán (2024) and Chourouk Hriech (2025).

Headerimage: Diana Scherer, Hyper Rhizome, 2023, galery Andriesse Eyck

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