21 Diplomatic Ferns by Sethu(ram)an Harikrishnan 

21 Diplomatic Ferns is an investigation into the artist’s interest in the relationship between humans and plants that inhabit places of significant human suffering. This enquiry started on his visit to a WW2 camp outside of Berlin, where he was transfixed by the plants sprouting out of the same soil that saw industrial-scale extermination of humans.

This experience set in motion a series of questions around plants being omnipresent witnesses of history, and their role in other places of human conflict. These questions take form in a United Nations Security Council arrangement of potted ferns (ferns being some of the most abundant plant families across the world), which reenact two significant UNSC meetings—meeting 9421 about Ukraine and 9439 about the Palestinian question. The artist hopes this juxtaposition—of plant and human dialogue about conflict—will evoke in his audience their own examinations of the human condition within the simultaneously nurturing and seemingly nonchalant flora as a framework.