Going Back To Her Roots

Inspired by Darwin’s theory on plant intelligence, German artist Diana Scherer manipulates the root systems of grass to weave patterns of magical beauty

- Alys Hurn

In an introductory paragraph on the homepage of her website, German artist Diana Scherer references The Power of Movement of Plants, a study by Charles and Francis Darwin into the movement of plant roots. She highlights their discovery that plants do not passively grow down but move and observe, demonstrating an intelligence that is often overlooked, but it is this intelligence that has enabled Diana to create stunning pieces of art made entirely from the roots of plants.

Her fascination with plant roots began while studying fine art and photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Diana developed a series of portraits called Nurture Studies, revealing the complex structure of roots in vases by photographing each plant with the vessel they had grown into, removed. She experimented with more than 100 different plants, from poppies and dandelions, to grasses and nettles but it was during this study that she began to connect different plant roots to different materials; the grass roots looked like silk, verbena roots like linen and daisy roots like wool. Diana became taken with the idea that she could create her own patterns using the root system and decided to take her study further.