Uriel Orlow seeks to make audible and visible what history tries to occlude. The Reconnaissance (Paused Retrospect) and The Voice-Over, both drawn from Unmade Film (2011-2014), involve a tour without visuals and a filmed excursion without sound. Their sites are two emptied Palestinian villages outside Jerusalem: Deir Yassin, whose inhabitants were driven out or killed during a massacre carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups in 1948, and nearby Lifta. Here, vacant buildings and plants tell of witnessing and the need for justice.
Five projects in the Exhibition develop Orlow’s dialogue with plants. In Herbarium Ghosts (2016-2026), he photographs outlines that pressed plants have left on covering paper, a ghostly evocation of colonial classification and ongoing extinction. Holding the Mountain (2026), a large-scale drawing mounted on a tile panel, celebrates vetiver, used in the Himalayas to bind slopes at risk from climate change. The short videos in Dedication II (2021/2026) address the symbiotic system between roots and fungi by which trees communicate.
Outdoor projects explore La Biennale as a nexus of human-plant exchange. Botanical Biennale (2026), a series of silkscreen-printed billboards, maps the origins of what grows in and around La Biennale sites. In Reveries of Collective Walkers (Reading to Plants) (2022-ongoing), Orlow invites visitors to read aloud to plants. What might a plant like to hear? Orlow beckons us toward botanical decolonialisation as ethical action and ecological repair.
—Cherry Smyth
In collaboration with Mohammad Bakri, Nayef Rashid, Rob Manning; Benveniste Contemporary, Madrid; Renato Chorão; Herbier du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle Paris; Herbario del Real Jardín Botánico Madrid (CSIC); Bolus and Compton Herbaria, Cape Town; Kew Herbarium, London; Herbarium Botanischer Garten Berlin; Italian Central Herbarium Florence; Meise Botanic Garden Herbarium, Brussels; Herbário LISC/IICT – National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon; Isabel Colher / Tardoz Ceramic Studio, Lisbon; Tobias Koch; Marco Tosato; In the shade of a tree
With the additional support of Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; CREAM – Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media, London; mor charpentier, Paris; Laveronica, Modica; Dialogue Gallery, Lisbon; Luzlinar, Fundão; Omanut, Zurich; Fundaziun Nairs, Scuol; Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah; Les Complices* Zurich; Bergen Assembly; CREAM – Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media, University of Westminster; British Council
