The exhibition is on view at the Tallinn Botanic Garden Palm House from November 21, 2025 to January 4, 2026.
The exhibition presents experimental textile installations that explore the role and significance of plants in the artists’ lives — from plant-derived materials to the survival strategies of plants themselves.
The exhibition responds to the challenge of adapting to a world in which intergenerational memory is increasingly replaced by manuals and regulations; where grand narratives have been reduced to linguistic abbreviations and direct contact has shifted into the virtual sphere. In artificial landscapes marked by plant blindness, algorithms have become our main points of orientation. For the artists, maintaining balance and remaining rooted in the real world means sustaining contact with nature and relationships with other species.
The exhibition explores what might be learned from plants through practical curiosity, poetic interpretation, and artistic practice inspired by them. The inspiration lies in the diversity of the plant world — its characteristic forms, patterns, and textures; its importance for humans and the environment; and its remarkable ability to adapt and survive even under very challenging conditions.
The works combine knowledge and practical experience to demonstrate the significance of plants as a seemingly inexhaustible source of resources: fertilizers that nourish ideas, fibers and natural dyes, examples of structural ingenuity, and seeds of creative thinking. Interaction with plants also offers health and balance. Plants help us remember and imagine stories that shape identity.
Within the context of the exhibition, a new language of communication has been created to address adaptation in today’s world: BOTEX.
Botany + Textile + Poetry + Meaning = BOTEXsemantics
In the BOTEXsemantic garden, BOTEXophs grow — hybrid forms synthesized from plants and textiles.
BOTEX is spoken by BOTEXegetes, those who love plants and interpret their strategies through the BOTEXophs.
The BOTEXophs are named and organized into a BOTEXonomic system called INDEX BOTEXEMANTICUM.
Within this BOTEXsemantic garden, visitors can discover how textile art interprets the knowledge offered by plants and communicates experimental experiences. Plants and textiles meet in the works through natural fibers, roots, plant-based dyes, and bioplastics. The installations are grown, spun, plant-dyed, embroidered, printed, felted, or pleated.
The exhibition remains open until 4 January 2026.
Tallinn Botanic Garden Palm House
Opening hours of the Palm House and greenhouses:
https://botaanikaaed.ee/et/lahtiolekuajad/