What happens in the space between intention and growth? Between the artist's hand and the mycelium's reach? Between our daily movements and the quiet accumulation of ecological breaks?

Nature Doesn't Draw Straight Lines brings together three artists:
Zixiang Zhang, Antonia Ablass, and Joana Alarcão, whose practices exist in active negotiation with living systems— plants, algae, mycelium, and the environments they inhabit. This is not art about nature but art with nature: a practice of collaboration, patience, and surrender.

In our accelerated contemporary world, we often miss the quiet changes and movements within the natural world that surrounds us - mycelium rewire itself around obstacles, algae bloom in warming waters, and trees adapt to buildings and concrete. Within their artistic practices, these artists create a dialogue of interconnectedness that brings forward these quiet ruptures and shows us that when we slow down enough, we witness other beings' agency.

The sculptures, installations, and drawings breathe, decay, adapt, and resist, honouring nature's unique processes. By relinquishing control, these artists give back materials their own agency, creating space for them to become co-authors in the artistic process, allowing the straight lines of human design to dissolve into the curved logic of organic systems.
The exhibition's visual and conceptual atmosphere aims to ask: What does it mean to create alongside, rather than upon? How do we hold space for nonhuman agency? What quiet tensions arise when we acknowledge our entanglement with systems larger and older than ourselves?

Biophilic art practices offer more than a metaphor; they enact a different relationship-one of care, attention, and collaboration. They remind us that nature has never drawn straight lines, and perhaps neither should we.

workshop

Before the exhibition opened, Joana and I held a workshop on bioyarn and the creation of seeds. Joana gave an introduction to making bioyarn with algae and everyone would make their own bioyarn. I showed how to crochet and then how to crochet a flower, then we added seeds and I talked about what it needs to let the seeds grow. Afterwards we all experimented with crocheting with bioyarn and the cottonthread. 

There were wonderful outcomes, very creative and it was very lovely to hold this workshop together with Joana. 

the exhibition

Joana Alarcão

Joana Alarcão (1997, Amadora, Portugal) is a Portuguese transdisciplinary eco-artist, curator, researcher, and podcast host who works predominantly within the concepts of social, political and environmental justice.
Her studio practice is a deep investigation into material agency and ecological consciousness. Using natural paints, charcoal, clay and experimental biomaterials, Alarcão develops sculptures, installations, and paintings that challenge conventional artistic narratives. Her work explores the complex intersections of human and non-human agencies, with the human body remaining a central narrative thread in her work, serving as a critical lens to examine modern slavery, climate crisis refugees, and contemporary political atmospheres.

Through her sculptures and installations, Alarcão also explores the physicality of human experience, investigating how bodies interact with and are shaped by environmental and social contexts.

In 2021, Alarcão founded the project Insights of an Eco Artist (IOAEA), which documents the impact and correlation art interventions have on social, political, and environmental global contemporary atmospheres. Since then, IOAEA has collaborated with multiple artists and projects that focus on global social-political atmospheres and environmental conservation, both in written and audio/podcast formats, live talks, virtual exhibitions and residencies.
Her writing has found homes in diverse platforms like Women to Women, Public Offerings Ltd., GateKeeper, and with NGOs such as Creative Conscious and Art Helps.

Zixiang Zhang

Zixiang Zhang (1990, Dalian, China) is a London-based BioArt artist whose work focuses on integrating biological materials into contemporary artistic practic
Her practice explores the relationship between human-made and natural substances through materials such as textile waste and mycelium. Central to her work are themes of collaboration, transformation, and regeneration presented as evolving ecological structures.
Her works have been exhibited across the UK, Europe, and China, and have been featured in exhibitions centered on ecological art, sustainable materials, and interdisciplinary dialogue. By incorporatin living matter, she shifts sculpture from static form to process-based structures that examine material life cycles and the boundaries between human activity and natural systems.
Her approach emphasises reduced artistic control, allowing natural processes to shape outcomes over time. Her practice contributes to broader discussions on the role of the artist in ecological contexts and supports dialogue between art, science, and environmental research.

My works

Inspired by the title of the exhibition Nature Doesn’t Draw Straight Lines, this piece reflects that idea on several levels.


It is a round knitted textile made of wool, held by wire and kept wet by a pump that moves water upward, which is then spread across the surface of the textile. Purple radish seeds are growing in the knit.


The wool is hand-spun by the artist using wool from sheep from her home village. The process of spinning is one in which the individuality of the raw material: each hair, each section of wool, differs slightly. Achieving a completely even yarn is impossible, yet also unnecessary.


The wool is knitted into a circular form using a binding that creates a rhythmic pattern, which becomes uneven due to the handmade process and the natural quality of the yarn.


The object is shaped by its materials themselves, allowing them to take agency and resist being forced into a specific form.


The seeds are placed into one of the stitches following the diagonal pattern, every fourth row. This enhances the diagonal direction of the binding, emphasizing its non-linear structure.


Since the plants always grow upwards, the diagonal arrangement allows each individual plant to be observed—how it winds and unfolds, and how its colours appear in varying shades. The artist invites to come closer, have a look at the single plants and see how not straight they and observe individual beauty 
og every single plant. 

The pump sustains the entire system, keeping the piece alive. It’s a human made system, maintaining growth, playing with the space between exact planting and incalculable growth. It is about how we could work with plants as co-authors, maintained by humans and the human-made. It raises a hundreds of years old question of what is nature, what is culture, what is human and how all is seperable. 

The artist is interested in finding ways to grow plants on textiles without the need for electricity. The sphere hangs in water, allowing its threads to draw water upward through capillary forces, keeping the plants moist.

The sphere functions as a symbol of human care for plants and of allowing new forms of symbiosis to emerge. 

Linen holds a special significance within the textile industry and has a long history. It is deeply rooted in many cultures. The use of linen has decreased significantly over recent decades, but it is now slowly returning and gaining popularity again. It has great strength and durability, but can be very soft and cooling. The use of the seeds is also an important characteristic of the plant, as they are traded for oil production and as food. The plant’s Latin name, Linum usitatissimum, reflects this history: linum refers to flax, and usitatissimum means “most used.”

It is not clear how long the plants will continue to grow. A gallery is not their natural habitat; the environment is not fully controlled. It is possible that they may die before the exhibition ends. If this happens, it cannot be changed. In that case, the artist invites to observe the dried plants. Observe them and what interesting shapes they will form. In nature, dying is an important part of the cycle. Dead plants are crucial for bacteria, fungi, and microorganisms in the soil, helping to create new soil and nutrients for future growth. Learning about the beauty of decay can help us understand the importance of the cycle of life.

"I often think about cities and what existed in a place before a city was there. We tend to accept the presence of cities as something normal, something we do not question. Yet before a city became a city, it was a village; before the village, there were perhaps only a few houses surrounded by fields. And before that, there was forest. Most of Europe was once forest.

Wherever you are standing, it is very likely that there was once a tree.

So what if we allowed something of what existed before to break through again? What if we admired grasses growing through the pavement, felt joy at moss on walls, and cared more deeply for trees?"

The textile was developed during an artist residency at Cortex Frontal in Arraiolos, Portugal.
It consists of a rhythmic wool pattern (tufted), created on a canvas where the artist put chia seeds before in an organic pattern. 

The idea is to interrupt the rhythm of the pattern through organic growth.

The whole exhibition is layed out with dried leaves. In the room for the video are tree tunks from the park to sit on. It is full on biophilic design and draws a wonderful connection to the exhibited works. It also thinks about the relationship between inside and outside. We think, outside of our houses is nature. But what if nature could come inside?