From January 15 to April 15, 2026, the large ledwall on the ground floor of Palazzo Citterio in Milan will host Vanishing Trees, a site-specific installation by Debora Hirsch, curated by Clelia Patella. The project, promoted by Palazzo Citterio and MNAD - Museo Nazionale dell’Arte Digitale, was created in collaboration with theBrera Botanical Garden and with the scientific support of the New York Botanical Garden, interweaving digital art, science and memory.
The work reworks, through the use of generative technologies, the images of three endangered trees, namely Ginkgo biloba, Pterocarya fraxinifolia and Torreya taxifolia, kept at the Brera Botanical Garden and classified by the IUCN. Transformed into living presences, these specimens become living witnesses of a world that resists the passage of time and the risk of oblivion.
Although conceived as a digital installation, the work finds its deepest strength in the memory that runs through it and transforms it into an immersive experience. Images generate and dissolve following rhythms that recall natural cycles, evoking the link between growth and disappearance. Through technological mediation, memory is amplified and translated into a contemporary language that can restore the biological and symbolic legacy of the past.
In Hirsch’s work, plant forms are placed in a space suspended between vital time and historical time, taking on an almost archetypal dimension in which the tree rises to a silent symbol of resistance. In the video, the trees take the floor and express themselves in the first person through texts by Lucas Mertehikian, a scholar with whom the artist has developed her research in the Plant Humanities. In this way, the human point of view is replaced by that of nature, in a gesture at once radical and empathetic that restores to plant matter its fundamental value.
In this visual and sound monologue, technology becomes an instrument of resonance and a means through which plant matter regains consciousness and voice. In dialogue with the Brera Botanical Garden and the New York Botanical Garden, Debora Hirsch, a visual artist who has always been engaged in reflection on biodiversity protection and endangered species, translates her own research of historical archives into a visual narrative that interprets the loss of biodiversity as a profound crisis of collective memory.
Vanishing Trees is inserted as a new chapter in the cycle of exhibition projects hosted on the Palazzo Citterio ledwall, realized in collaboration with MNAD - National Museum of Digital Art. The program, which opened in December 2024 with the immersive work Renaissance Dreams - Chapter 1: Painting by Refik Anadol, continued in 2025 with Madame Pinin by MASBEDO, Parallax by Kevin Abosch and Strata #1 by Quayola.
Debora Hirsch is an Italian-Brazilian artist whose multidisciplinary practice crosses painting, artificial intelligence models, proprietary datasets, algorithmic processes, post-production and 3D animation. Her research focuses on the protection of biodiversity and attention to endangered species, exploring the potential of technology as a tool to redefine the concepts of life, memory and disappearance. Aiming to restore the complexity of reality, his work interweaves botanical, ecological, historical and cultural knowledge, according to a methodological approach based on inquiry, reinterpretation and theoretical reflection. His most recent lines of research are in the field of Plant Humanities, a discipline within which the artist analyzes the transformations of the relationship between human beings and the plant world. His sources range from herbaria to scientific archives, rare books to illustrations, and digital repertories and textual materials, while discussions with scientists, humanists and botanists often help define the conceptual framework of his works.
His work has been exhibited in numerous public and private institutions internationally, including Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary in New York, the Villa Bernasconi Museum in Cernobbio, the Palazzo della Ragione in Verona, MuBE - Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia in São Paulo, the Santa Maria della Scala Museum in Siena, MOCAK - Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Smack Mellon and A.I.R. Gallery in New York, MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome, nGbK in Berlin, Fondazione Adriano Olivetti in Rome, Il Chiostro Arte & Archivi, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Palazzo Forti in Verona, and MA*GA Museum in Gallarate, with many solo exhibitions dedicated to his work.
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| Milan, at Palazzo Citterio, Debora Hirsch's digital installation dedicated to endangered trees |
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