Drift. Yann Gross

But behind this seductive image another story emerges, a story of the imposed displacement of living beings, inscribed in economic, colonial and productivist logics whose effects extend far beyond their point of origin.

Yann Gross’s project, exhibited in Room A at La Casa Encendida, stems from the story of plant distribution since the nineteenth century, when the invention of the Wardian case, a glass box developed by Dr NathaniEl Ward, made it possible to transport plants over long distances. This cemented the notion that living beings could be displaced, acclimatised and integrated into the logics of economic expansion.

The title of the show, Drift, refers to an aimless movement produced by external forces. From Europe to the Americas, these trajectories generate different but related situations. In some contexts, palm trees play a role in the construction of artificial landscape identities, shaped by tourist imageries. In others, they become instruments of a type of development based on the intensive exploitation of soils and resources.

Drift uses these elements to highlight the distance between the promises that accompany these transformations and the realities they produce. Palm trees can therefore be viewed as symptomatic of the contradictions of the modern world, revealing how seductive projections generate profound and often irreversible imbalances.

The exhibition features photographs, a Wardian case containing a palm tree, and a video installation comprising four projections in which human figures address the spectator, activating a fluctuating perceptive relationship in which the position of the visitor becomes ambiguous, part watcher and part watched.

Yann Gross (1981, Vevey, Switzerland) develops his practice between Europe and the Amazon rainforest, working with photography, video and installation. His pieces explore the way in which plants, images, gestures and narratives travel from one territory to another, and the forms, uses and imageries that are reconfigured as a result of these displacements.

Inspired by ethnobotany, he investigates the relationships between environments, representations and lifestyles. He often collaborates with local communities, questioning the promises of development, acclimatisation or transformation projected onto territories. His works shine a subtle light on situations where appropriation, desire and restriction are interconnected, and where tensions emerge between projection, environment and material conditions.

Yann Gross has shown his work at venues and events such as the Aperture Foundation, New York; Rencontres d’Arles; Photo Elysée, Lausanne; FOMU, Antwerp; and the Palacio de las Artes in Miraflores, Lima. In 2025 he was the artist-in-residence at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.

Exhibition produced with support of Casa de Velázquez, Pro Helvetia, the City of Lausanne and the Canton of Vaud.