Plants Intelligence
Uģis Albiņš, Ursula Biemann, Felipe Castelblanco, Karine Bonneval, Gints Gabrāns, Arnis Rītups, Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick, Julia Mensch, Marc Lee, Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy, Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Zheng Bo
Group exhibition
Curated by Raitis Smits and Yvonne Volkart
Opening 16 October 2025, 6 pm
Exhibition 17 October – 23 November 2025
kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga
Plants Intelligence
Symposium
16 – 18 October 2025
Symposium Keynote by Yvonne Volkart with Zheng Bo
Friday 17 October 2025, 3 pm
On site and online
Art Academy of Latvia, Riga
As part of
Plants Intelligence
RIXC Art Science Festival 2025
Curated by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits
16 – 18 October 2025, Riga
Program, participants and registration
festival2025.rixc.org
plants-intelligence.ch
The exhibition and symposium are a collaboration between Plants_Intelligence.
Learning Like a Plant and RIXC Art Science Festival.
2025 marks the 25th anniversary of RIXC Art Science Festival in Riga. This year’s edition will include the exhibition opening of Plants Intelligence and a broad program with a symposium and public keynotes by Noelia Billi, Jana Kukaine, and Yvonne Volkart, principal investigator of the SNSF-funded research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant of the HGK Basel FHWN, and co-curator of RIXC’s anniversary festival exhibition. The exhibition is conceptually and thematically developed in collaboration with Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant and will feature works by the artists involved in the research project: Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, Rasa Smite (with Raitis Smits). It will be complemented by other works exploring how underestimated vegetal processes can be aesthetically experienced, generating new knowledge about plants through the concept of intelligence, and will also include results of the collaboration with numerous partners, establishing South-North and East-West exchanges of vegetal mutual learning.
The symposium will feature presentations and discussion panels with the artists from Plants_Intelligence, alongside a diverse lineup of international contributors from Europe, the Nordic countries and Canada to South America and Asia who bring fresh global perspectives to the dialogue between art, science, and nature.
The research project Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant with Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch, Rasa Smite) is funded by the SNSF and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW.
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