The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) and the Centre for Creativity (CzK) proudly present the 28th edition of BIO Ljubljana, one of the world’s oldest design biennials, celebrating 60 years since the first exhibition. Curated by Alexandra Midal, BIO28 Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? brings together global designers, artists, and thinkers to explore the relationship between art, design, and the coded language of flowers. This edition reflects on themes of feminism, secrecy, and resistance through floriography. Alongside the exhibition and five production platforms, BIO28 includes talks, workshops, and city-wide events, with highlights at ISIS Gallery and Mala Galerija in Ljubljana.

Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? exhibition
Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? is not merely an exhibition but also a multi-faceted manifesto that operates through back-and-forths between the present and the past, as well as between art, design and cinema. It is dedicated to the science of secrecy and, more specifically, to the coded language of flowers – or floriography – in the service of feminism. During the Victorian era, the popularity of floriography gave flowers the power of symbolic communication of morals and feelings. In opposition to modern cryptology – full of machines and decoding – the secret language of flowers demands listening.

The fragile and charming floral motifs and their metonymy of the woman-flower also form a relationship with the natural sciences, which constrain women to a decorative role. The same motifs also use guile and deceit to transmit information. Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? explores how the arts have embraced this double language in the fight for societal changes. Just as media philosopher Vilém Flusser defines design as “the founding intention of all culture, of all civilization” and does not hesitate to call the designer a “cunning plotter laying his traps”, floriography proposes a form of resistance that hides behind the seemingly neutralized and seductive banality of floral language. Combining aesthetics and feminism, flowers take on the role of a double agents: like spies, they work to both provide and conceal information to better serve interests and deceive enemies.

The exhibition examines how the floriographic ruse manifests itself in works by Margaret Watts Hughes and Loïe Fuller, or in Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium, with which – from prison – she led the revolutionary Marxist group Spartacus League. It shows how it manifests in the photographs of forget-me-nots projected by Ray and Charles Eames to undermine American government propaganda in Moscow. We also see it in the disguising of political and military leaders’ identities with the names of Middle Eastern flora – a language established by Fadwa Hassoun – or in the elixir created specifically for this exhibition by Marguerite Humeau.

Production platform

BIO28: Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? features a production platform developed with the Centre for Creativity, showcasing interdisciplinary teams mentored by renowned creatives. Following teams explore the coded language of flowers and their connection to marginalized groups:

• Lures’s Time by matali crasset, who views beeswax as a product of both the plant and animal worlds, explores how humans fit into this scenario. The project is rooted in Slovenian flora, with beeswax serving as the central element.
• Melting Through by the XenoScapers Collective combines beeswax with digital projections to explore the grotesque qualities of matter in hyperspace.
• (Un)wowen tales, mentored by Dimitri Zephir and Florian Dach, with production by Anna Odulinska and Nika van Berkel, juxtaposes Slovenia’s lace heritage with the erasure of stateless individuals in 1991, challenging ideas of nationality and belonging.
• I’ll be Poppyby El Último Grito explores place and fiction in new creative geographies. The project creates a short film on the themes of Double Agent and floriography, replacing the exhibition catalogue and incorporating curatorial texts and works from the biennale.
• Design for Society: 60 Years of the Biennial of Design – A documentary film, produced by OSM Films with the help of Maja Šuštarič, explores the 60-year evolution of the Biennial of Design (BIO), focusing on its development, key moments, and shifts in design.
• Movement for Public Speechby Prostorož mentored by Polonca Lovšin, presents Murmuring Orchids, an installation using orchids as metaphors for women in precarious housing.
• Cattleya by YASA Collective, mentored by Grashina Gabelmann and Michelle Phillips, reclaims the floral metaphor in Don’t Teach a Flower How to Bloom. Through posters and a web platform, the project deconstructs femininity stereotypes, revealing the resilience of flowers and women.

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Curator: Jane Withers; assistant: Ria Hawthorn; Head of BIO27: Anja Radovič

The 27th edition of BIO Ljubljana (BIO27), the oldest and one of the leading design biennials in the world, opening on 26 May under the curatorship of Jane Withers, brings together forward-thinking and environmentally conscious designers, architects, thinkers and researchers from around the globe.

OPENING: May 26, 2022

Based at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) and created in cooperation with, the Centre for Creativity Slovenia (CzK), the Biennial comprises the Super Vernaculars exhibition; a presentation of the five production platform commissions; and a vibrant programme of talks, workshops and engaging events. A city-wide satellite programme of exhibits and events will be announced in April.

• Introduction to the Super Vernaculars theme

The introductory section of the BIO27 exhibition is staged as a Wunderkammer of objects and ideas that illuminate the beliefs underpinning this contemporary movement. Drawing on works from Slovenian national heritage and beyond, it shows how vernacular practices inspired designers throughout the 20th century and were often an unacknowledged element of modern design. Setting the scene are works by Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari (Italy), alongside Marjetica Potrč (Slovenia), and Adam Štěch (Czech Republic).

• Negotiating Traditions

Through the works of Carolien Niebling (the Netherlands), Ant Studio (India), Alicja Bielawska + Centrala (Poland), Francesca Sarti of Arabeschi di Latte (Italy), and others, Biennial visitors have an opportunity to explore how contemporary designers are reimagining, adapting and subverting traditional ideas and deep-rooted practices to address contemporary needs and challenges. Super Vernaculars’ third exhibition section showcases various design processes and systems proposed as alternatives to the centralised infrastructures that accommodate our modern lives and, in many cases, are no longer able to sustainably support the requirements of growing populations in a time of climate change. Projects such as Marjan van Aubel’s (the Netherlands) solar panels, new material research by Atelier LUMA (France), and water systems by Ooze Architects (the Netherlands) reveal hidden local-scale processes and rethink them in terms of circular, nature-based systems. Exhibiting at BIO27 are the NGO project Isla Urbana (Mexico), Girjegumpi Sami Library (Norway), Kamikatsu Zero Waste Village and Centre (Japan) and INDUS by Bio-ID Lab at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UK), all of whom present human- and community-centric research and projects that foster social justice and healthy, flourishing communities.

•  BIO27 Production Platform

BIO27 Super Vernaculars’ production platform produced in cooperation with CzK, features five Slovenian interdisciplinary teams mentored by internationally acclaimed mentors to tackle compelling problems of local communities and the environment. Design collective Krater in dialogue with Atelier LUMA (France) and BC Materials (Belgium) is developing ongoing research into rammed earth architecture to create a teahouse that is situated on the crater-like construction site in the heart of Ljubljana occupied by Krater. Delving into the ‘world of grains’, team Robida.plus based in remote Alpine village Topolò and mentored by designer and food futurist Carolien Niebling (the Netherlands) is drawing on Slovenia’s rich cultural, agricultural and culinary heritage to redesign the Slovenian tradition of buckwheat use. Pjorkkala, the team mentored by Shneel Malik (India), an architect, biodesign researcher and social entrepreneur, is addressing the problem of pollution in natural water sources in Slovenia by creating prototypes for local, nature-based solutions. Adam Štěch, an architectural historian and co-founder of the creative group OKOLO (Czech Republic) is mentoring Garnitura to communicate the architectural legacy of the renowned Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik to new audiences by drawing on the architect’s profoundly human vision for the city of Ljubljana.  Futuring is undertaking an environmental audit of the Super Vernaculars biennial and is guiding the reduction of its environmental impact. Mentored by designer and sustainability expert Sophie Thomas (UK), Futuring is developing an open source toolkit to help BIO27’s design teams to raise their awareness and reduce the impact of their work. The pioneering toolkit will be published and available to designers and cultural institutions globally, sharing the Biennial’s sustainability study for others to build upon.