Wellcome Collection 2022 exhibition highlights

Wellcome Collection’s 2022 exhibitions programme draws together diverse perspectives that seek to enable new understanding about the social and cultural contexts of health. In the spring, the exhibitions Rooted Beings and In the Air will consider the relationships we have with plants and the air that surrounds us, exploring the fragile interdependence between human and environmental health. In the Autumn, In Plain Sight will take a critical look at the ways in which we see through lenses, and shape both personal perspectives and institutions.

Rooted Beings
February 24–August 29, 2022
Rooted Beings will examine our symbiotic relationship with plants while recognising them as ancient, complex and sensitive beings that enable life on earth. As the current environmental crisis exposes the vital yet fragile entanglements between human and planetary health, the exhibition will reimagine plants beyond a resource for human consumption and revaluate the significance and agency of vegetal life.

The exhibition will feature items from Wellcome’s botanical collections as well as significant loans from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Artists Patricia Domínguez, Eduardo Navarro, Ingela Ihrman, Gözde Ilkin, Joseca, Sop, and RESOLVE Collective, will present work which slowly decomposes the artificial and pervasive wall between humans and nature that is devastating our ecosystems, our liveliness and our health.

The exhibition and public programme aims to raise awareness of environmental justice, encouraging us all to learn from plant behaviour and reimagine our role as active agents in the shared space of our ecosystem.

This exhibition is a collaboration between Wellcome Collection and La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
Commission partners: Delfina Foundation, De La Warr Pavilion, West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.

In the Air
May 12–October 16, 2022
In the Air explores our relationship with the air that surrounds us, examining connections between the atmosphere and the planet, uncovering the secrets of the air we breathe and investigating the geopolitics of air utilised as a weapon or political tool.

Moving freely across borders and through bodies, air is both integral to our existence and a threat to our health, holding hidden dangers that render us vulnerable to infection, as the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted, or exposing us to pollutants.

Through contemporary artworks and objects from Wellcome’s collection, the exhibition will present air as an archive of our collective actions and give voice to those living with the consequences. It will question how air is used as a form of political control; what it can tell us about the health of our planet, and ask, do we all breathe the same air?

In Plain Sight
October 6, 2022–February 19, 2023
In Plain Sight will explore the subjectivity of vision and the tools that shape how we see the world and are seen by others. Corrective and protective eyewear, vision systems and other lenses enable us to construct realities, perform identities and observe others. The exhibition will present a range of perspectives, including that of non-visual learners, to critically reflect on the predominance of vision as a sense.

On display will be a range of historic and contemporary objects including: an ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus amulet; 17th century Chinese stone lens spectacles; a 19th century book in Moon type, the predecessor to Braille. Keiichi Matsuda’s film Hyper-Reality explores the impact of augmented vision alongside other objects that will show the development of functional and fashionable eyewear throughout the ages. A selection of crowd-sourced photographs compiled by style archive What We Wore will reveal stories of how we would like to be seen, and a new commission by the artist Carmen Papalia explores different modes of touch seeing.

These works will explore how the visual sense has long dominated and conditioned the value systems and institutions we have constructed whilst asking, what happens when we open ourselves up to seeing in different ways or let others see for us? 

For further press information and images please contact:

Juan Sanchez, Media Manager, Wellcome Collection
j.sanchez [​at​] wellcome.org / mediaoffice [​at​] wellcome.org / T +44 207 611 8820 / +44 (0)20 7611 8866
wellcomecollection.org/press

Visitor information
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About Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library exploring health and human experience. Its vision is to challenge how we all think and feel about health by connecting science, medicine, life and art. It offers changing curated exhibitions, museum and library collections, public events, in addition to a shop, restaurant and café. Wellcome Collection publishes books on what it means to be human, and collaborates widely to reach broad and diverse audiences, locally and globally.

Wellcome Collection actively develops and preserves collections for current and future audiences and, where possible, offers new narratives about health and the human condition. The museum and library work to engage underrepresented audiences, including deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, and racially minoritised communities.

Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome which supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. We support discovery research into life, health and wellbeing, and we’re taking on three worldwide health challenges: mental health, global heating and infectious diseases. We are a politically and financially independent foundation.