Connect To The Environment This Year With Beautiful Botanic Art Exhibitions

Image: Alexandra Kehayoglou Photos courtesy of Denver Botanic Gardens

A diverse roster of exhibitions featuring botanical and environmental themes is presented in the Freyer – Newman Center and throughout the Gardens. Using sculptures, paintings, photography, textiles and installation, artists explore their connection to the environment and tell stories of culture and heritage. Local, national and international artists are featured. Exhibitions are included with general admission. One more exhibition and related programs will be announced later.

Image: Tali Weinberg, Silt Study: Missouri River Basin, hemp, organic cotton, plant and insect dyes, mineral mordants and petrochemical-derived fishing line, 2021. Photo courtesy of Joseph Minek

Tali Weinberg: The Space Between Threads 
March 3 – June 9, 2024

Using data about our warming climate, Tali Weinberg’s textiles weave together science and art to tell stories of land and water, people and landscapes, and ecological and human health. The weavings and sculptures represent connections between humans and the vast changes taking place around us. Based in Illinois, Weinberg is an interdisciplinary artist whose work responds to climate crisis. She combines plant-derived materials with plastics and data to trace relationships between home, health, ecology and our warming world. Weinberg’s works are held in public and private collections and have been exhibited both throughout the United States and internationally.

Image: Alexandra Kehayoglou, Thistle, textile wool, 2020.

River’s Voice: Textiles by Alexandra Kehayoglou
April 14 – December 8, 2024

Monumental textile artworks represent the fragile beauty of vanishing landscapes. River’s Voice features Alexandra Kehayoglou’s carpet works highlighting the Paraná de las Palmas River in Argentina and the surrounding wetlands—rich in natural beauty and home to millions of organisms but threatened by agricultural expansion and development. Visitors are invited to remove their shoes and walk across a work that spills onto the floor. Kehayoglou uses recycled materials from her family’s carpet manufacturing studio in Buenos Aires and a hand-tufting carpet gun, a process similar to producing commercial carpets. Her work has been exhibited throughout the world including a 2015 collaboration with fashion designer Dries Van Noten that saw one of her carpets used as a runway during Paris Fashion Week.

Image: Sculpture by the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles.

Spirit Guides: Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles
April 28 – September 8, 2024

Fantastical creatures, made specifically for this exhibition, will be installed throughout the Gardens’ outdoor spaces. Created by the workshop of Mexican artists Jacobo and María Ángeles, the brightly colored and richly patterned sculptures depict imaginary hybrid animals that act as both spirit guides and astrological embodiments of human character. Inspired by the Zapotec calendar, the animal sculptures embrace both contemporary art practices and folk art traditions. Jacobo and María Ángeles are a married artist team based in San Martín Tilcajete in Oaxaca, Mexico. They employ more than 100 artisans in a workshop that also acts as an art school, offering creatives the opportunity to advance and develop their artistic skills.