Now:
- From 16 May to 12 October 2025: School visits to the collective exhibition Botanical murmurs (detailed information below)
- From 5 July to 19 September 2025: School visits to the exhibition One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules by the duo of artists, Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli (detailed information below)
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From 16 May to 12 October 2025:
Collective exhibition Botanical murmurs
Bibliothèque de Genève (BGE)
While many plants are dismissed as insignificant, harmful or unphotogenic, others invade shops, interiors, social networks and, more generally, our visual culture. Plants can be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, but they can also become symbols and witnesses to current ecological upheavals. The Monstera deliciosa, for example, is valued in the western culture for its decorative potential, while the Ticino palm has become a symbol of biological invasion and climate change in the space of a few years.
Since its invention, photography has contributed to the development of our knowledge of plants and enriched our visual culture of the plant life. The exhibition features a wide range of contemporary botanical studies by artists from Geneva, Switzerland and abroad, ranging from intimate narratives and scientific documentation to speculative exploration and everyday observation.
This first exhibition in the Centre de la photographie Genève’s new space reflects the Art Nouveau floral friezes in the Espace Ami-Lullin, an exhibition room inaugurated in 1905, as well as its location in the heart of the Parc des Bastions. This park became Geneva’s first botanical garden in 1817, on the initiative of Geneva botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. He was the author of one of the first botanical classifications, and undertook a major project that led to the description of almost 60,000 plants.
Botanical murmurs presents works by Saskia Groneberg, Yann Gross, Yann Haeberlin, Felicity Hammond, Hilla Kurki, Yann Mingard, Lea Sblandano, Berit Schneidereit, Bernard Tullen, Magdalena Wysocka & Claudio Pogo, and the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève.
THEMES AND DISCIPLINES
Questions addressed during the visit include, depending on the age of the pupils:
- Botany and art: what is the story behind Geneva’s first botanical garden? How can we visually describe a plant? How do artists adopt certain botanical codes to create a piece of art?
- Plants and humans: what relationship do we have on an everyday basis with plants, and what do they mean to us? Why are some plants more popular than others? How does plants exist in landscapes that have been urbanised and modified by humans?
- Climate change and plants: why do some plants become invasive and harmful to ecosystems? On the other hand, how can certain plants help combat pollution?
- Narrative and documentary: how can flower photographs be used to tell a personal story? Which strategies do artists use to document very precise and specific subjects?
- Photography in all its forms: can we create sculptures with images, and how? What is photorealism? Is a photographer still a photographer if they use photographs they haven’t taken themselves?
Depending on the age of the pupils, the subjects and themes covered during the visit include:
- Botany, history, ecology
- Archives, personal narratives, documentary
- Photography, art
Venue
Centre de la photographie de Genève
Bibliothèque de Genève
Promenade des Bastions 8
1205 Genève
Dates
16 May to 12 October 2025.
School visits from 19 May 2025.
Hours
Hours: Visits with the facilitator by reservation only from Monday to Friday between 9:00 and 18:00.
Tours without a facilitator are also possible, preferably by prior arrangement, when the museum is open to the public (Tuesday to Friday, 11h-18h, Saturday, 11h-17h).
Age
all school degrees from 8 years old (5P)
Duration of the visit
45 minutes
Languages
French or English
Price
free for classes
Reservation
via the online form
Further information
by email at visites@centrephotogeneve.ch or by phone at 022 329 28 35
Preparatory visit
The preparatory visit is possible during the public opening of the museum.
FURTHER INFORMATION
From 5 July to 19 September 2025:
Exhibition One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules
by Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli
Maison de l’enfance et de l’adolescence (HUG)
After a years-long long-distance relationship, Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli decided to move in together in 2023. This personal decision also became the starting point for their artistic collaboration. Their cohabitation begins with an artist residency at the Verzasca Foto Festival in the canton of Ticino. During this residency, the couple creates a work consisting of photographs and texts specifying sixty-eight rules for living together harmoniously.
A year later, their project continues during another artistic residency at La Becque, in the canton of Vaud, for an exhibition at the 2024 Vevey Image Biennale. During this second phase of creation, the artists produce new images and add eight more rules for their life together. Through this intimate, humorous, and experimental work, the artist-couple reflect on the challenges they’ve faced in different forms of living together and the solutions they’ve come up with : a set of rules on how to deal with life as a couple, but also a personal manifesto on ways to grow together.
The exhibition invites visitors to “enter” the home of Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli, which is, like their relationship, constantly evolving and adapting. The project, also published in book form by Ciao Press, is now in its third iteration, and presented at the Maison de l’enfance et de l’adolescence with an original installation specifically designed for the site.
THEMES AND DISCIPLINES
Questions addressed during the visit include, depending on the age of the pupils:
- Living together: how to live with someone you love? How to share physical and emotional spaces? How to balance your own space with the other person’s? What are the joys and challenges of living together?
- Experimentation and documentation: which ways do the artists choose to tell their story? How does photographic staging help to convey an emotion or experience? Through what means do artists manage to visually and spatially translate the sometimes-invisible dynamics of living together?
- Artistic process and collaboration: how does the artist duo work together? Where are the boundaries between private life and artistic work? How does the project evolve over time and why?
Depending on the age of the pupils, the subjects and themes covered during the visit include:
- Couple life, living together, artistic collaboration
- Tenderness and self-irony
- Staging and storytelling
- Photography, writing, art installation
Venue
Maison de l’enfance et de l’adolescence des HUG
Boulevard de la Cluse 26
1205 Genève
Dates
5 July to 19 September 2025.
Hours
Visits with the facilitator by reservation only from Monday to Friday between 9:00 and 18:00.
Tours without a facilitator are also possible, preferably by prior arrangement, when the Maison de l’enfance et de l’adolescence is open to the public (Monday to Friday, 9h-20h).
Age
all school degrees from 8 years old (5P)
Duration of the visit
30 minutes
Languages
French or English
Price
free for classes
Reservation
via the online form
Further information
by email at visites@centrephotogeneve.ch or by phone at 022 329 28 35
Preparatory visit
The preparatory visit is possible during the public opening of the museum.
FURTHER INFORMATION