Plant Love - Harvest Peace

Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes is one of the most influential and visionary artists of the past century, widely recognised as a pioneer of environmental art, conceptual art and ecological thinking. For more than six decades, she has created works that unite art, science, philosophy, mathematics and ecology, challenging audiences to consider humanity’s relationship with the natural world and the long-term consequences of our actions.

Born in Budapest in 1931, raised in Sweden and later educated in the United States, Denes emerged in the 1960s as one of the first artists to address environmental and planetary concerns through contemporary art. Long before climate change, sustainability and ecological collapse entered mainstream discourse, her work explored questions of resource management, population growth, environmental degradation and humanity’s responsibility to future generations. Moving fluidly between drawing, sculpture, installation, land art, writing and public interventions, she developed a uniquely interdisciplinary practice that continues to shape contemporary discussions around art and ecology today.

In 2022, Denes collaborated with CIRCA on Another Confrontation, a major public commission marking the fortieth anniversary of her landmark work Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982). Presented across CIRCA’s international network of screens in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York and Seoul, the project revisited her prophetic concerns through a trilogy of moving-image works spanning past, present and future. Accompanied by an augmented reality wheat field in Piccadilly Circus and a global questionnaire designed to be opened in the year 3022, the commission introduced Denes’s extraordinary vision to a new generation while reaffirming the urgency of her message. Through the recurring call to “Plant Hope – Harvest Peace”, the project demonstrated the artist’s enduring belief that imagination, responsibility and collective action remain essential tools for shaping a more sustainable future.

Denes’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and numerous major institutions worldwide. Her projects, from Wheatfield – A Confrontation in lower Manhattan to Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule in Finland, are now regarded as defining works in the history of environmental art. Through a practice that continues to inspire artists, scientists and activists alike, Agnes Denes has shown that art can do more than reflect the world. It can help imagine, question and transform it.