Indesiderate. An Installation in the New Courtyard of Palazzo del Bo

17.12.2025

The installation Indesiderate was inaugurated on Tuesday, December 16, in the New Courtyard of Palazzo del Bo. It was created by artist Giacomo Segantin together with female and male students from the Universities of Padua, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Verona who took part in the Sustainable Art Prize.

This site-specific installation is the first public outcome of a broader project entitled Indesiderate. Marginal Spaces and Urban Foraging Practices, developed by the artist on the occasion of the Sustainable Art Prize. The colored gels that modulate and determine the color of the light were produced together with the participating students during a workshop held at the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, extracting color from pokeweed berries collected near the train station. Starting, geographically, from those very margins where plant life is still able to operate according to “other” logics—undisciplined or untamed—urban foraging emerged as the first step in refocusing attention on places where life self-determines and on the ways we interact with them.

Indesiderate does not represent the plant world: it performs it within a shared space, questioning what defines inclusion. The dyeing properties of the plant are reinterpreted and applied to an environmental dimension.

The installation will remain at Palazzo del Bo until December 22.