Trees .

With more than 200 artworks from nearly 30 artists from China, Latin America, India, Iran and Europe, the exhibition celebrates trees as a source of major aesthetic inspiration for human societies. It also echoes the latest scientific discoveries that shed new light on tree intelligence and invites us to consider trees—the source of our atmosphere—as true partners in our shared world. The path of the exhibition weaves three narrative threads around trees: aesthetic meditation, scientific knowledge, and finally, that of the tragedy of deforestation and the mega-fires that are devastating the planet.

The exhibition brings together a community of artists, botanists, and scientists who, through their aesthetic or scientific careers, have established a strong and intimate bond with trees. French botanist Francis Hallé has been studying trees for more than sixty years and compiling his discoveries in observational drawings and in the notebooks that accompany him on his travels. The installation French artist Fabrice Hyber created for the exhibition revisits the genesis of his artistic and personal project of planting 500,000 tree seeds in the valley adjacent to the family farm, thus gradually transforming the fields into a forest, and the landscape into a work of art. Colombian artist Johanna Calle vehicles on delicate silhouettes of large paper trees a political message about the vulnerability of Colombian peasants. For her series Perimetros, she transcribes onto old legal paper the Ley de Tierras [Land Law], which protects the rights of displaced peasants, allowing them to claim ownership of land by declaring the trees they have planted there. Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, a pioneer of plant neurobiology and defender of the idea of plant intelligence, presents in the exhibition surprising proofs on videos of their communicative and memory capacities.

Bringing together paintings, monotypes and a table-herbarium, Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini orchestrates the imaginary meeting of trees, borrowed from tropical botanical gardens, and the markers of urban modernity.

Kalepi Sanöma, Joseca and Ehuana Yaira Yanomami, artists from the Yanomami community – indigenous people living in the northern Amazon – depict with drawings and paintings the richness of their traditions and the beauty of their way of life in the forest.

The exhibition has been enriched with works by Chinese artists. Hu Liu used to create a poetic conception by accurately grasping the plants’ shapes in her paintings. Recently she started coloring whole canvases with pencils, leaving only shapes and air flows in the black and letting the audience find their own figures in the reflection in the painting, overlaid with wind, grass, waves, and leaves. Huang Yongping had a long-time relationship with the Fondation Cartier, which invited him for a residency in 1989 and continued to show his work on many occasions. During this residency, Huang Yongping began his first art creation in the Western world and developed a set of metaphors and symbolic grammar “rescuing trees.” The exhibition presents photos of the installation he created at the Fondation Cartier involving the trees that surrounded his workplace. Trees are taking on many different roles in Zhang Enli’s work: wind, poetry, and characters. Four of his paintings are included in the exhibition, like portraits of the old. These time-honored tree trunks, although without leaves, reveal their unique humor and self-confidence, as if telling the audience of the hardships they experienced when younger.

The exhibition has also been enriched with the creation of a special installation by the Italian architect Stefano Boeri and his Shanghai-based studio, that enables guests to explore the concept of Vertical Forest City, a next-generation of high-rise urban buildings completely covered by the leaves of trees and plants that promotes the coexistence of architecture and nature in urban aeras.

Trees also brings visitors on an audiovisual journey, enhancing the sensory experience and amplifying the voices of the artists, scientists and philosophers who have collaborated on this project. To accompany the exhibition, PSA and Fondation Cartier will organize a number of special events including screenings, conferences and performances.