Vegetal Drawing

The SeedsValues uses artistic engagement to further our perception of seeds’’ importance. Our field research involves learning to draw vegetal beings in order to gain understanding of what matter to them, and in themselves. The purpose of this ethnographic methodology is twofold.

We appreciate drawing as a slow encounter with plants and seeds, sharpening eyes to observe plant life and reproduce it on paper through bodily atunement. Drawing the qualities of agrobiodiverse plots aims to cultivate the “arts of noticing” (Tsing 2015), identified as crucial human dispositions for incentivating care towards non-human forms of life (Van Dooren et al. 2016). As an ethnographic methodology fostering encounters between plants, the humans who care for them, and the ethnographer, vegetal drawing is expected to proliferate ‘versions’ (Despret 2001) of agrobiodiversity emerging within diverging seed ecologies.

A seminal methodology for the constitution of botany as a scientific discipline, vegetal drawing played a crucial role in the history of science. Today, drawing continues to be a crucial technique for plant documentation despite the existence of faster and supposely more objective techniques such as photography. The SeedsValues proposes to experiment with plant drawing as a way of fostering forms of knowledge practices that are not constrained by the naturalist search to uncover the reality of a preexisting nature. This initiative also involves a historical investigation into the role of drawing in the emergence of modern sciences.