To See the Forest For the Trees

November 13, 2025 – January 31, 2026

Goucher Art Galleries is pleased to present To See the Forest for the Trees, a new site-specific installation by interdisciplinary artist Samantha Sethi. Responding directly to the gallery’s distinctive architecture and its relationship to the surrounding landscape, Sethi transforms the space into a living, luminous meditation on plant agency, interconnection, and ecological vulnerability.

The Bond Gallery—its three glass walls extending outward from the building like a greenhouse—becomes both container and collaborator. Within this transparent environment, Sethi constructs an immersive installation in which illuminated maple trees appear to grow through the ceiling, encircled by English ivy vines poised to overtake the space. Through subtle pulsations of light, the work visualizes the internal communication systems of plants: vascular networks that transmit information throughout the body in response to stimuli, and the complex underground exchanges that occur through root and mycorrhizal systems.

By rendering these unseen biological exchanges visible, Sethi invites viewers to consider parallels between plant signaling and the human nervous system, asking us to rethink the boundaries between species, environments, and forms of intelligence. The installation situates natural processes within the architectural framework of the gallery, revealing the tension—and possibility—embedded in encounters between the built environment and the living world.

Sethi’s practice is grounded in sustained research into ecological systems and the entanglements between humans and the environments we shape. To See the Forest for the Trees continues her exploration of how constructed and natural worlds inform, disrupt, and mirror one another.

For more information, please contact Goucher College Galleries at art.galleries@goucher.edu

Exhibition Details

Opening Reception: November 13, 2025, 4–8 PM
Artist Talk: December 3, 6–7:30 PM