Crystal Grid

This series of twelve photo collages combines photographs of tropical plants in the botanical gardens of Tallinn, Brussels, Glasgow, Brooklyn, Frankfurt and the Bronx, New York. With the help of the collage technique, Kuimet has been able to place plants that are actually based thousands of kilometres apart side by side on a single surface. The arrangement of the collages is based on the structure of the transept of the Crystal Palace, emphasising the palace’s descent from the architecture of greenhouses and palm houses. It was not until the 19th century that living plants could be transported by sea and grown in heated greenhouses. Neither the erection of the Crystal Palace nor modern botanical gardens would have been possible without the turbulent development of building materials during the Industrial Revolution.