“Bodies of the Earth. Our Bodies” | essays on the exhibition
The exhibition Bodies of the Earth. Our Bodies reflects on the historical and contemporary ways of representing nature and the change of relations between what is human and what is non-human. It also develops the idea behind the project All Old Art Used to be Modern, juxtaposing works from different epochs to show the continuity of our sensitivity and transformation of the way we look at reality.
The exhibition features works by Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Bogna Burska, Honorata Martin, Teresa Murak, Alicja Patanowska, Agnieszka Polska, Łukasz Rusznica, Zofia Sobolewska Ursic, Teresa Tyszkiewicz, Rafał Wilk, Liliana Zeic and Jakub Julian Ziółkowski, presented alongside canonical historical botanical works, including Flora Prussica by Johannes Loeselius, Kreutterbuch by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, and Zielnik by Szymon Syreński from the collections of the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as eighteenth-century works by Barbara Regina Dietzsch and Johann Friedrich Schulze from the Print and Drawing Studio of the National Museum in Gdańsk’s Medieval and Early Modern Art Department.
The exhibition is curated by Aleksandra Grzonkowska and Maja Murawska, who also authored the three essays below.
Between the system and relation
During the early modern period and today, the depiction of nature has been a sphere of tension between order, classification and subordination on the one hand, and relationality, complexity and the critique of anthropocentrism on the other.
In the early modern epoch, the core role was played by the Cartesian division of reality into two separate substances: the thinking one (the mind) and the extending one (matter). As a part of this model, nature was reduced to an object of cognition – measurable and mathematically describable. Consequently, its depiction took the form of systematic ordering: anatomy atlases, botanical prints and geographical maps. The visual aspect became a tool of classification and epistemic harnessing of the world.
This paradigm was shared by the system of Carl Linnaeus, who introduced the binominal manner of naming organisms, which continues to be the foundation of biology. It sought to order the diversity of the natural world into a clear, universal system. Taxonomy understood in this way operates like a visual atlas: it simplifies the world’s complexity, inscribing it into stable categories and logical cognitive structures. It simultaneously shows a typically early modern need of classification, with nature divided into categories, assigned to names and entered into a logical structure.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, Aby Warburg proposed a different approach. In his Mnemosyne Atlas, he put together pictures from different epochs and cultures, replacing a single, ordered system with a dynamic one, based on combinations and associations. Nature was no longer just an object of scientific description – it became a part of human memory and imagination. Images began to ‘enter into a dialogue’ with each other, and their sense emerged in relations rather than within a single, agreed meaning.
The contemporary perspective, developed inter alia by Donna Haraway, challenges the very principle of the separation of people and nature. Here, the world is not a total of autonomous entities, but a web of interdependence covering organisms, technologies and the environment. The depiction of nature no longer consists in its observation from an external position, but in the unveiling of entanglements and co-creation. What appears is a map of relations, processes and flows rather than an atlas as a tool of classification. Under this approach, it is no longer possible to stand ‘next to’ nature and observe it – we are a part of it. Juxtaposing the above perspectives shows an evolution in the perception of nature: from an object subordinated to the mind and a field of cultural meanings all the way to a network of interdependent entities. The contemporary depiction of nature does not entirely reject the legacy of the early modern period, but subjects it to critique, seeking to step beyond its limitations. In effect, nature ceases to be something ‘outside’. It becomes something we are immersed in and co-create.
Order and wonder
The early modern botanical illustration grew from a conviction that the world can be explored by observation.
From the second half of the 15th century, when illustrations began to replace dried specimens in herbaria, plants were taken out of the natural landscape and treated as autonomous objects of observation. A leaf, a stem or a root system stopped playing solely a utilitarian or a symbolic function – they became objects of analysis, documentation and aesthetic focus. The precision of drawing, a neutral background and isolation of form facilitated focusing solely on the structure of life.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, along with the development of florilegia and illustrations ‘from nature’, the practice of viewing details intensified. Here, the marvelousness of nature did not consist in the exotic or uniqueness understood as a performance. Rather than that, it consisted in the intensity of seeing – a discovery that even the most common biological form contains a complexity which cannot be entirely embraced. Nature seemed to be an order with its own logic, rhythm of growth, and material presence.
A special place in this process was occupied by the 17th- and 18th-century Gdańsk – a port city marked by its wealth and vast trade contacts, which created the right conditions for the development of modern research in the area of the natural sciences and collectorship culture. It was here that representations of plants being not just illustrations of nature but also a part of a vast network of an exchange of knowledge, naturalia and images, were created. Participants of this network included botanists, merchants, collectors, engravers, publishers and artists connected with Gdańsk cabinets of curiosities and private gardens.
A significant role was played inter alia by Jacob Breyne and Jacob Theodor Klein, whose gardens and collections constituted places of observation, acclimatisation and the classification of plants brought from different parts of the world. Keeping intense contacts with ports of the Netherlands, England and the other more distant lands, Gdańsk was becoming a hub for the circulation of exotic seeds, herbarium specimens and early scientific publications. The plants were grown, dried, described, and transformed into images in the studios of engravers and painters. The activity of Jeremias Falck and artists cooperating with scholars, who developed an exceptionally precise language of botanical copperplate engraving, was particularly significant.
The process involved the removal of a plant from the landscape and its placement against a neutral background. The isolation of form enabled analysis, comparison and classification, but it also intensified the very experience of observation. Botanical print was increasingly becoming a tool of cognition combining science, art and collectorship. Gdańsk plant illustrations unveil not only the history of early modern botany, but also the history of the city as an important centre for the exchange of ideas, in which the observation of nature was an element of the intellectual and artistic culture.
In this sense, the early modern botanical print was born from the experience of astonishment – not by exotics, but by the very structure of life. Here, the *miraculousness (wonder) does not lie in the exceptionality, but in concentration and mindfulness: a belief that even the smallest biological form contains an order demanding precise examination. Drawing became a tool of knowledge, and a form of affirmation of the material presence of nature.
When matter begins to act
Can matter act? Are the growth of plants, circulation of water, cracking of wood or slow decomposition of organic tissue merely processes unfolding in the background of human history or are they a form of agency we had been unable to notice for a long time?
The contemporary visual arts have been increasingly posing such questions, undermining one of the most persistent foundations of modern thought: a conviction that only the human being is an active agent of the world.
For centuries, nature remained above all an object of observation. Described, classified and ordered, it became something to be examined, measured and depicted. Its image fulfilled the function of a tool of knowledge allowing one to grasp the form and subjugate the diversity of the world to a clear system. In this model, matter remained passive. People acted, and nature was an object of action.
Contemporary art has been increasingly reversing this perspective. Instead of focusing attention on stable forms, it has been directing it to processes: growth, erosion, sprouting, circulation, decomposition and regeneration, which have become the main protagonists of the image. Nature no longer seems to be a collection of individual objects, but a ceaselessly changing living matter, which remains in motion even when it appears to be motionless. This shift makes it possible to look at the world as a dense web of processes rather than an ordered collection of things.
This change of the way we think is described by new materialism, and in particular Jane Bennett’s concept of ‘vibrant matter’. The philosopher proposes that we cease treating agency as an exclusively human feature. Obviously, this does not mean that a stone, soil or water possess consciousness. Rather, this is about recognising that matter is not an inert material waiting to be given meaning. It is able to affect its environment, initiate changes, resist and co-create reality. It acts in a different way than people, but it does not mean that it remains passive.
From this perspective, the contemporary depiction of nature is no longer tantamount mainly to representation. Rather than asking solely what the world looks like, it explores how it functions. How does matter behave when left to its own processes? What forms are created outside human design? What happens when the artist not so much imposes a form, but allows the powers of growth, decomposition or transformation to speak?
These questions lead to a deeper change. Nature is no longer perceived as a separate sphere existing outside culture. It is no longer a landscape observed from a distance or a resource subordinated to human needs. It becomes an active participant of reality – with its own dynamics and its own rhythm of change. Contemporary art not so much gives it a voice as makes us aware that the voice has always been there, although for a long time it has remained muffled by anthropocentric perceptions of the world.
Perhaps this is why contemporary images of nature increasingly concentrate on the process rather than the form, on what the object can become rather than on what it is. What remains in the centre of attention is the potential for change – a moment in which matter falls out of control, steps beyond the set boundaries and unveils its own logic of action. Then, nature ceases to be an object of representation. It becomes a co-author of the story.