Botanica Meraviglia

Botanica Meraviglia is a site-specific project that intertwines contemporary art, botanical research, and curatorial practice in the heart of the Botanical Garden of Palermo.

The ideal heir to the Diorami “botanical expedition” (PAC2021 – Plan for Contemporary Art), the intervention continues the reflection on the landscape as a living archive and on the Garden as an organism in continuous metamorphosis.

In the dialogue between nature and visual language, the Casa del Pozzo — a small late 19th-century tuff building, the vital core of the Garden water system — becomes a perceptual threshold and experiential device.

Alessandro Sala photographic installation transforms the space into a natural theater, amplifying the relationship between interior and exterior, between vision and memory. At the center of the composition, the Bismarckia nobilis, a palm tree native to Madagascar, becomes a symbol of the coexistence of plant generations: from its base springs a young plant, an image of continuity and future. Around it, other emblematic presences—Dracaena draco, Ceiba speciosa, Washingtonia robusta, Hibiscus, Nymphaea—illustrate the adaptability and resilience of the migrant species that populate the Garden. Under the canopy of the monumental Ficus macrophylla f. columnaris, the narrative dimension of the project unfolds: a sound journey conceived by Francesca Berardi, with music and ambient sounds by Gianni Gebbia, which recreates Sicilian biodiversity through the voices of botanists, agronomists, intellectuals, and activists.

The audio tour, accessible via QR code, takes you through seven symbolic stages — from the dwarf palm trees of the Zingaro Nature Reserve to the papyrus of the Ciane River, from the Portuguese orange trees of the Pantelleria gardens to the almond trees of the Kolymbethra Garden, from the carob trees of the Iblean countryside to wild herbs — sage, thyme, rosemary from the Val di Noto, to the Ilice di Carrinu on Mount Etna — composing a geography of resistance and rebirth.

The project is completed by two essential oil distillers, symbols of a knowledge that combines science and sensoriality: the Casa del Pozzo thus takes on a new educational and olfactory function, a laboratory of shared experiences and practices.

Botanica Meraviglia invites us to look at the landscape as a sensitive archive of forms and relationships, a balance between reason and enchantment, where wonder becomes a tool for knowledge and care a form of ecological thinking.