Herbarium der Sehnsucht

In the context of a call for proposals from the Albert Koechlin Stiftung on the theme of ‘longing’, Maria Josefa Lichtsteiner was able to realise her project Herbarium der Sehnsucht (Herbarium of Longing) with a publication and a garden installation. She chose 20 private gardens in central Switzerland for her project and visited them several times over the course of a year. With the garden installation in the park of the Bruder Klaus Museum, the artist attempted to convey moments of longing, as expressed in the conversations with the private gardeners. Following the cycle of vegetation, the installation changed constantly from spring to autumn.

In this book, the artist approaches the field of tension between hope, patience and transience – which emerged in the conversations about longing, and which is directly linked to the place of the garden – in different ways and draws across drawings, collages, photographs and silkscreen prints.