08/27/2026
Stop by the North garden to take a look at our Mandala bed! It is the second part of our butterfly garden upgrade to be completed. We are still working on many more projects to finish this garden update.
The artwork was originally installed in the museum as part of the exhibition Actions for the Earth - Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology | Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. It was donated to our school garden this summer.
We planted native plants in the original planting in the museum. They grew very well (we rigged up grow lights onto a mobile light station for them) and after the exhibition closed we dug them up, potted them, kept them alive for the winter (the exhibition closed in December) and then planted them outdoors in the spring. It seemed completely counter to the intent of the exhibition to trash the plant bed itself, so we kept it at the museum until we were finally able to bring it to New York to donate it to the school. In keeping with the intent of the artwork, native plants will once again be planted in the mandala once the conditions are right for them to survive and thrive. The bed was not designed to live outside permanently though, so over time it will begin to break down and deteriorate, as all raised beds do. I hope that it will be a beautiful and joyful addition to the butterfly garden for many years to come!
The museum built the plant bed to be in our installation of the exhibition. It was built and planted according to the artist’s specifications.
Title of artwork: Memory of Nature, 2013 (Nerman Museum iteration was 2024)
Natural material (wood, soil, seeds, plants)
Collection of the artist
Memory of Nature is made with earth, wood, seeds, and water, made to reference the Hindu-Buddhist cosmology of the Borobudur Mandala, or the concentric pattern that symbolizes the universe and its inhabitants. An architectural manifestation of the mandala, built in approximately 800 A.D., can be found in the UNESCO-listed temple site of Borobudur located in the Central Java province of Indonesia, which is also where Arahmaiani lives.
Memory of Nature explores the link between nature and religion as expressed in Buddhism, where the interconnectedness between humans and nature highlights
our mutual dependency for existence. Seeds (and plants) have been planted in this garden bed to mirror the mandala design. Visitors and gallery volunteers (now students at New York Montessori) are asked to water and nurture the seeds as they grow into green shoots, which bring the mandala to life.
