Pictured: El Anatsui, AG + BA (AR), 2014, 2021. Photo courtesy of Selby Gardens.

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens will host a second year of the cutting-edge contemporary-art exhibition Seeing the Invisible at its Historic Spanish Point campus. The most ambitious and expansive show to date of contemporary artworks created with augmented-reality (AR) technology, the exhibition launched last year at 12 botanical gardens around the world. Selby Gardens is one of four inaugural sites that will continue to host the show for a second year, through September 2023. Six new garden and museum sites will join the global exhibition in October. Seeing the Invisible features works by more than a dozen internationally acclaimed artists, including Ai Weiwei of China, El Anatsui of Ghana, Isaac Julien CBE RA of the United Kingdom, and Sarah Meyohas of the United States. At Selby Gardens’ Historic Spanish Point campus, the show’s 13 AR works are installed in carefully curated locations throughout the 30-acre preserve. Visitors engage with the art through an app that can be downloaded to a smartphone or tablet. An updated version of the app for Season 2 will be available in October. Seeing the Invisible is the first exhibition of its kind to be developed as a collaboration among botanical gardens around the world. The same commissioned artworks are placed in outdoor settings at the participating institutions, creating parallels and contrasts between them. The AR nature of the exhibition has allowed for the creation of expansive, immersive works that engage with existing features of the natural landscape, going beyond the limitations of what is possible with physical artworks. The collaboration also allows the partner gardens and museums to bring leading contemporary art to their communities in a sustainable way. The show was initiated by Hannah Rendell, Executive Director at the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, and Candida Gertler, co-founder of the London-based Outset Contemporary Art Fund, with support from The Jerusalem Foundation’s Innovation Fund. Seeing the Invisible is co-curated by Hadas Maor and Tal Michael Haring. For Selby Gardens’ installation, Vice President for Visitor Engagement and Chief Museum Curator Dr. David Berry led the local curatorial team. The show is sponsored here by Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

Pictured: El Anatsui, AG + BA (AR), 2014, 2021. Photo courtesy of Selby Gardens.