A velvet ant, a flower and a bird

A velvet ant, a flower and a bird evokes a garden of knowledge anchored by three familiar figures from nature – a velvet ant, a flower and a bird. These figures represent a parliament of beings, each carrying symbolic and metaphorical weight that encourage us to reimagine what intelligence means.

Each museum floor is presided over by one of these natural entities, creating a kind of garden where there is no pre-established order, but rather an ecosystem in which the analogue and the digital interrelate to give rise to a fantastic mental realm.

Drawing from the University of Melbourne’s Classics, Biology, and Art collections, alongside new commissions and performances; historic and contemporary art co-mingle to envision intelligence as living, continually evolving, interconnected and interdependent.

Guest curated by Chus Martínez, director of the Institute of Art Gender Nature at the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design, Basel, Switzerland.