EXHIBITION
A Garden of Shifting Minds
Adam Vackar
June 19 – September 2, 2025
Curated by Pavel Kubesa
Venue: NOD, Dlouhá 33, Prague, CZ

Guests: Bernd Blossey (Cornell University), Yosef Brody, Rosetta S. Elkin (Pratt Institute), Jakub Kvizda (Charles University), Abigail Pérez Aguilera (The New School), Petr Pyšek (Czech Academy of Sciences), Mel Rio, Harpreet Sareen (Parsons School of Design), Mark Spencer (Natural History Museum, London), Věra Vačkářová

A Garden of Shifting Minds
Adam Vackar in conversation with curator Pavel Kubesa

Pavel Kubesa: Adam, at first glance, the exhibition A Garden of Shifting Minds looks like a botanical installation. But the title itself suggests it is more of a mental landscape than a traditional garden. What was its primary impulse?

Adam Vačkář: The exhibition grew out of long-term research on the invasive plant Giant Hogweed, with which I spent several years in various ecological as well as cultural contexts. I was fascinated by how this plant is perceived—as an intruder, a danger, a biological threat. Yet it is precisely through this stigmatization that a much broader picture is revealed: of how we understand nature, ourselves, and what we consider “original” in our ever-dynamically changing environment. The garden we are speaking of here is more of a mental space—shifting, meandering, sometimes conflictual. It is a garden of knowledge that is not governed by linear thinking but by the continuous recoding of relationships.

PK: From both your text and the exhibition, it’s clear you’re interested in the intersections between art, science, and spirituality. How do you understand such transdisciplinarity? And how can visitors orient themselves within it?

AV: For me, transdisciplinarity is not merely a method but a way of coexisting. I wouldn’t say that I’m trying to integrate science into art or translate scientific knowledge into an aesthetic language. It’s much more about letting different forms of knowledge—scientific, intuitive, spiritual, emotional—coexist in a single space without hierarchy. In the exhibition, you encounter biologists like Professor Petr Pyšek, psychologists, landscape architects, spiritual healers. Each of them brings a different way of relating not only to the Giant Hogweed but also to the world as such. Ultimately, the visitor is not just a spectator but becomes a kind of participant in an experiment, where thinking can move differently than it usually does.

PK: You approach the theme of invasive species not only ecologically, but also culturally, politically, and even existentially. What layers do you think the Giant Hogweed reflects?

AV: The Giant Hogweed is a mirror of our fears and our projections of power. It was imported at the beginning of the 19th century as an ornamental plant, then became a symbol of natural beauty, but was later declared a dangerous threat. That reversal of perception reveals how quickly we can transform admiration into control. In a broader sense, it reflects anthropocentric thinking: anything that eludes control is seen as a problem. Through the Giant Hogweed, we can raise questions about migration, colonialism, embodiment, and even the very nature of knowledge. In this sense, it is an existential plant—it shakes our certainties.

PK: You speak of the plant as a subject (– not an object –) of knowledge, as something that perceives in its own way. For someone familiar with recent philosophical trends like OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology) or Speculative Realism, and their characteristic “turn toward the object,” such a shift in thinking seems logical and justified. Yet in a broader social context, this still isn’t the dominant way of understanding the surrounding world and the role of the human and non-human subject within it.

AV: It is more of a proposal for a change in perspective. I’m not saying the Giant Hogweed has consciousness like a human. But we can try to understand it as a partner in thinking, as an entity through which we learn to perceive the world differently. I draw on concepts such as vegetal ontology, but I am also inspired by the shamanic relationship to plants, where each plant carries a specific intelligence and brings humans important knowledge. This shift—from object to partner—I consider essential for transforming ecological thinking.

PK: The exhibition does not only work with visual media—sculpture, video, and photography—or with dried plants as sculptural objects. There is also an important performative element in the background. How important are corporeality and materiality for you in transmitting ideas?

AV: For me, it is important that an idea is not only verbal or conceptual. The works in the exhibition were created over a long period. I collected film footage and interviews over several years. Other works also developed over a relatively extended time, and it was important for me to return—not only to today’s commonly accessible digital formats—but also to classical modeling techniques and the materiality of analog photography. I wanted to step away from the computer screen and immerse myself in the feeling of working with my hands, to perceive non-synthetic visual impressions, to experience a different temporality that is not accelerated. Some ideas need to be embodied, to take root, to be transmitted through the skin, scent, vibration, and time. This also materialized, for example, in my personal experience of toxic burns caused by the Giant Hogweed. All the works in the exhibition are essentially means of touching something otherwise difficult to articulate. I am interested in how art processes the way nonverbal knowledge and the body respond to what the mind cannot consciously comprehend.

PK: The title A Garden of Shifting Minds almost sounds like environmental science fiction, or like some kind of transitional ritual. Does the exhibition also have a political dimension?

AV: Certainly. Politics cannot be separated from the body, nature, or knowledge. But here I’m speaking about a different kind of politics than what we usually see in the media. It’s a politics of sensitivity, attentiveness, care. It’s about how we speak about one another, how we think about the Other—whether it is a plant, a migrant, or a body that does not fit the norm. In this sense, the Giant Hogweed is a political being: it raises questions of boundaries, identity, defense, colonization. And our reactions to it often say more about us than about the plant itself.

PK: Looking back on your several-year journey with the Giant Hogweed, what has it brought you?

AV: It taught me to stay with what is uncomfortable. Not to immediately solve a problem, but to listen to what we are making into a problem. It taught me to slow down. To think in different time scales. And above all, it taught me that knowledge doesn’t have to be only a matter of the mind, but also of relationship, the body, and intuition.

Adam Vačkář & Pavel Kubesa
Prague, June 2025