Diana Scherer
Diana Scherer is a visual artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. Born in Lauingen, Germany, she studied fine arts at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her artistic practice encompasses botany, materials research, textiles, and sculpture. Recent exhibitions include Manifesta 15 Metropolitana, Reset Now – Haus der Kunst München, Soil – Somerset House London, Farming Textiles – Museum Kranenburgh, Intelligence of Plants – Frankfurter Kunstverein, the 2022 Sydney Biennale, Gene Cultures – MIT Museum Cambridge, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Fashioned from Nature at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and Shenzhen.
In her ongoing project, Interwoven 2015 – , Diana Scherer focuses on the dynamics of the underground parts of plants. The root system, with its hidden subterranean life, is considered by neurobiologists to be the brain of the plant. Through this project, the artist illuminates these subterranean processes.
Scherer employs a unique technique that harnesses natural growth processes to create diverse structures from root tissue. She draws her motifs from forms found in the plant world, as well as from artificial structures. The result is both tactile and poetic, and her creative approach evokes the current ecological balance between humanity and nature. However, her work and approach raise essential questions: to what extent is it relevant to speak of cooperation with nature? Is it even logical? Are we witnessing an artistic and cultural appropriation of the conditions inherent in natural processes of self-sufficiency? These questions reveal the fundamental ambivalence of our relationship with nature. The artist constantly explores the interaction between (plant) culture and (plant) nature. Scherer's work invites reflection, but above all, it constitutes a poetic representation of the human desire to control nature.
Interwoven received the New Material Award 2016. This biennial prize, organized by Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, invites artists and designers to develop sustainable materials and innovative technologies. Scherer successfully completed this project, from the initial idea to its concrete realization, evolving from a living dress to sculptures and then to large-scale installations.
Her works are included in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Design Society in Shenzhen, FOAM Amsterdam, the Museum Arnhem, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Rabo Art Collection, the art collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the Bijzondere Collecties in Leiden, Normec, the NN Collection Netherlands, the UMC in Utrecht and the Museum of Photography in Rotterdam.
