The Institute for Postnatural Studies, in dialogue with MUSE researchers, invites us to redefine the narratives surrounding our understanding of “nature” through speculative and imaginative methodologies beyond taxonomies. Creating a postnatural garden pushes us to question the values on which modernity is based and to redefine new ways of being in the world through a decolonial perspective that decentralizes humans. Inside the exhibition, a glossary of actions that link us to the world of botany, and shape contemporary ecological practices, allows us to collectively re-signify concepts and classifications on which the societies of a certain part of the world have been historically founded.

The display, conceived as a constellation of concepts, objects, and static and moving images, unfolds the intersectionality among different disciplines and their processes, expanding the museum’s narrative. Each term of the glossary relates to the stories of botanical specimens, also coming from the MUSE collections and exhibited until now only in rare cases, opening them to questions and critical reflections. The Agorà is transformed into a garden of ideas, stories, and relationships to question and research ecological and sustainable practices through events, workshops, screenings, and participatory readings accompanying the exhibition. 

Postnatural Gardening seeks to address the crises of the transitional epoch we live in through collective rethinking employing interdisciplinary visions. For this reason, scientific and common terms are mutually borrowed, attempting to give them new meanings and find a common horizon of action.