Diana Scherer

 “I approach the root system as if it were yarn. For example, the refined, white root structure of grass reminds me of silk and the powerful, yellowish strands of the daisy I compare to wool.”

Diana Scherer’s practice encompasses photography, material research, plant root-weaving and sculpture, to explore the relationship between man and his natural environment. Scherer’s work takes as her starting point the ambiguous tendency of man to at once cherish nature and also manipulate it in a reckless way, through a desire to control it. Forming the basis of her investigation is a focus on vegetable material and other living material forms, Scherer works with biological processes which intervene in different ways, sometimes intuitive, sometimes scientific, to set the course in her own way.

Interwovendemonstrates Scherer’s fascination with the dynamics of underground plant parts. The root system, with its hidden, subterranean life, is regarded by plant neurobiologists as the brains of the plants. In 2015, Scherer began to apply this “intelligence” of plants to her work, seeking to draw our attention to these hidden processes, wishing to make them visible at all times. In collaboration with biologists, Scherer found a technique to control the growth of plant roots, which results in the natural network of the root system transmuting into an artificial textile; the patterns of which are based on the construction and ordering principles of nature.