Laurence Aëgerter: Healing Plants for Hurt Landscapes (spec. ed.)

This artist’s book is the result of Herbarium Cataplasma, a twofold community art project that Laurence Aëgerter developed at the invitation of the city of Leeuwarden in Friesland, the Netherlands.

Aëgerter led a careful reconstruction of the plan of the medicinal garden of the medieval Abbey of Saint Gall on an unused plot of land in Leeuwarden, which was once part of a convent. This project was realized in collaboration with the local residents.

Aëgerter also invited the residents for a symbolical healing ritual of destroyed landscapes. She selected 100 images by searching the web for photographs of disasters created by nature and man throughout the world.
Participants were invited to treat the photographs of destroyed landscapes with the medicinal plants from their newly built garden, with appropriate herbal therapies (e.g. cannabis for anxiety relief or ginger against pain from burns).

As the source images were mainly used as news photographs, Aëgerter’s book relates to a newspaper design.