Nomadic Garden — pengshuaipaolo

Peng Shuai Paolo Nomadic Archive Publications About Contact

Nomadic Garden
2026
Site-specific installation
Piazzale Teatro, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato

Central fountain with solar energy, four wooden corner sections on wheels, plants grown hydropnically (Ailanthus altissima, Salix babylonica, Eriobotrya japonica, Artemisia verlotiorum and Brassica chinensis).

Peng Shuai Paolo’s Nomadic Garden is located in the public space between the glass façade and the outdoor amphitheater of Centro Pecci. The work is a temporary, mobile landscape made up of four seats and a central fountain powered by solar energy. Its regular, geometric forms echo the layout of Italian Renaissance gardens, built to express humankind’s dominion over nature. For this reason they were revived during the Fascist period, as part of a broader project of constructing national identity, to which Peng’s work stands in firm opposition.

In the garden’s flowerbeds grow several plant species native to China but gathered between Lombardy and Tuscany, among them Ailanthus altissima, Salix babylonica, Eriobotrya japonica, Artemisia verlotiorum, and Brassica chinensis. These plants were introduced to Italy through various processes of diffusion and exchange, until they became part of the new landscape that hosts them. Their migration histories open a dialogue about origins, and about the ways of belonging and of building community.

The work is completed by a series of public presentations, developed in collaboration with Professor Roberto Pecorale and students of the Convitto Nazionale Cicognini. These include an activity for children, accompanied by a bilingual reading in Chinese and Italian of one of the legends about the mythological figure Shennong (“Shennong Tastes the Hundred Herbs”), credited with inventing agriculture and medicine. The garden thus becomes a space of relationship and shared transmission.

Project made during the first cicle of SUPERTOSCANA resiency, hosting institution: Siena Art Institute (SART), SIENA.

Tecnical support by Crates s.r.l

Courtesy Centro Pecci, Photo by Daria Ivleva.