Majlis Garden, Venice Architectural Biennale 2021

Our garden – which occupies a space which until recently was a bleak hardstanding – aims to create a striking and alluring landscape setting for a Majlis commissioned by the Caravane Foundation and designed by internationally acclaimed bamboo architects Simón Vélez and Stefana Simiç. The term Majlis originated in pre-Islamic Arabia: it denotes a place where people come together to discuss local events and issues, exchange news, socialise, and deepen their connection with each other. The exhibition has been curated by Thierry Morel, and the garden shall remain in place after the Biennale concludes in November 2021.

Our rustic productive garden celebrates the pre-eminent role of Venice in the introduction and dispersal of exotic flora from the Orient and creates a legacy – in the form of a productive garden – for the ancient Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore (still an active Benedictine house).

Venice was the centre of the mediaeval European spice and exotic plant trade. The Republic’s monopoly on the importation and redistribution of exotic spices and plants for medicinal, culinary, commercial and ornamental purposes bolstered the so-called ‘Myth of Venice’ by emphasising its power, unlimited magnificence and its access to foreign resources and the luxury trades. The gardens of its monastic institutions were among the Veneto’s earliest botanical laboratories, and their flora rich and varied. Our garden is a contemporary and playful response to the Venetian impulse to gather, appropriate and display the rare, the useful, the exotic and the unusual.

Collaborators include Hortus Loci (UK), Fratelli Berti (Venice) and the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore - Benedicti Claustra Onlus.