Lost & Found Tour

Giovanni Aloi’s research focuses on the Anthropocene and new conceptions of nature in art. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Aloi is the author of Art & Animals (2011), Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (2018), Why Look at Plants? The Vegetal Emergence in Contemporary Art (2019), Lucian Freud – Herbarium (2019), Posthumanism in Art and Science (2020), Vegetal Entwinments in Philosophy and Art (edited with Michael Marder, 2023), and Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking (2023). He has contributed to BBC radio programs, worked at Whitechapel Art Gallery and Tate Galleries in London, and currently is USA correspondent for Esse Magazine. Aloi has curated exhibitions in the US and Europe and is co-editor of the University of Minnesota Press series “Art after Nature.”

Jeremie Fant is Conservation Scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. He is interested in rare and threatened species, gene-flow and pollination, restoration genetics, and conservation of genetic diversity.

Andrea Kramer is Senior Director of Restoration, Associate Conservation Scientist, and David Byron Smith Family Curator of Natural Areas at the Chicago Botanic Garden. She conducts research in partnership with natural areas stewards to inform how we care for and understand our natural areas. In particular, she is interested in understanding how natural areas can best be stewarded to support species diversity of plants and all of the other species that depend on them. This includes informing work to produce and use seeds of native species to support the restoration of diverse and resilient habitat.

Luftwerk explores light, color, and perception in immersive, installations. Focused on the context of a site for each project, Luftwerk applies their interpretive layer, integrating physical structure, historical context, and embedded information into each piece. Since founding 2007, Luftwerk has amassed a significant body of work ranging from site-specific installations to experimental projects that interpret data. Luftwerk is the artistic collaboration of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero.