The art and science behind more-than-human systems
In collaboration with ecophysiologist Marion Boisseaux and the Scoffoni’s Lab at Cal State Los Angeles, California
From April 10th to June 7th 2025 at The Luckman Fine Art Complex
Becoming With: Reading the Grasses
As artists, we are drawn to the visible: the delicate structure of a leaf, the poetic potential of a stem, the silent beauty of form. As ecophysiologists, we peer into the unseen, seeking to understand the inner processes of plants and how they respond to their environments. When these two ways of seeing converge, something new emerges — a space for shared inquiry, wonder, and speculation. This exhibition is the result of a collaborative dialogue between science and art.
Grounded in ongoing research by the Scoffoni Lab at Cal State LA the show invites visitors into a sympoietic system — a collectively-produced space without fixed boundaries, shaped by many agencies becoming together. Here, grasses from the Poaceae family are not simply specimens of study, but living participants in an evolving, interdisciplinary exploration.
Working side by side with ecophysiologist Marion Boisseaux, the show was co-curated weaving complementary perspectives. The collaboration is observed as both process and practice, an open system of shared attention, care, and creation.
Grasses dominate nearly 40% of the Earth’s surface. They feed us, shape our landscapes, and hold stories of resilience and adaptation. Yet, they are also part of the planet’s most endangered ecosystems.
Through cutting-edge research on grass physiology and drought resistance — particularly the study of photosynthetic pathways (C3 and C4) and their hydraulic underpinnings — scientists from Scoffoni’s Lab, which Boisseaux’s part of, uncover how these humble plants survive and thrive in the face of climate change. Responding to this research from both curiosity and cafe, the artworks, all site-specific, incorporate living plants, microCT imaging, sculptural forms, and light-based installations to reimagine the invisible flows of water and energy within the grass body. In doing so, it opens up new modes of sensing, inviting us to feel, not just understand, the entangled dynamics between human and more-than-human worlds.
By bringing the scientific and the poetic into conversation, this exhibition asks: how do we read a plant? How can we listen to its inner rhythms? And what might we learn — about survival, interdependence, and imagination — if we begin to see the world as a network of relationships rather than isolated parts? Sympoietic systems are formed collectively, without fixed boundaries in time or space. They are evolving constellations shaped by communal holoents—entities that are always part of something larger—diverse agencies becoming together.
Let this exhibition be such a system. A place where science, art, plants, and people co-create new understandings — and perhaps, new futures.
