Flora Incognita
ASTROBOTANICAL HERBARIUM

Introduction

Imagine a parallel world, similar to our own Earth, but where the plant kingdom has evolved in entirely different ways. In this alternative universe — that of potentially habitable exoplanets — plants find their astrobotanical doubles, shaped by other magnetic, gravitational, and atmospheric forces. Flora incognita is this new uchronia proposed by Vincent Fournier: a speculative herbarium dedicated to the possible forms of plant life, at the crossroads of art and botany.  

With the collaboration of scientists from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, the artist anchors fiction in reality. In the spring of 2025, at the Domaine des Étangs in France’s Limousin region, he transposes the site’s local flora onto the exoplanet Prima sidera to imagine its evolution.  

Reinterpreted through 3D technologies, this encyclopedic herbarium achieves an unprecedented photographic precision, in the lineage of the great naturalist iconographies, from Anna Atkins to Karl Blossfeldt.  

Through images, Flora incognita explores the possible forms of life. A mirror of our own world, the project evokes our origins and transformations, while questioning our relationship with a biodiversity now in upheaval — a singular and visionary approach.  

Émilie Traverse

Opening Reception

6.5.2026（Wed） 6 – 8 pm

Vincent Fournier

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 - 1986), born in France. Famous for his dynamic photographs of car races and elegant women, Lartigue casts a mischievous eye on his surroundings. He notably documented the excitement of the years of the Belle Époque with a keen eye, and photographed vacationers on the French Riviera and Basque coast from the 1920s to the 1980s. Internationally recognized in 1963, Lartigue became a reference for many photographers.