In the Amsterdam Forest, a free art exhibition Het Onzichtbare Zichtbaar ("Making the Invisible Visible") runs until 1 November. Seven works reveal the hidden life of the forest ecosystem — from fungal networks and organisms in the soil to environmental changes that cannot be noticed with the naked eye. The project invites viewers to look at the familiar natural landscape from a different point of view and to discover processes that usually remain beyond attention.
The exhibition is being held in the Amsterdamse Bos for the second time: its first edition took place in 2025. This year the route includes six open-air art installations and a documentary film The Underground Astronaut. Almost all the works were created specifically for this place. They are located among the trees in the area of the Bostheater forest theatre, and the film is shown at the Boswinkel information centre.
The unifying theme of the project is the hidden interconnections in nature. The artists turn to scientific research, natural materials and sound experiments in order to present processes that are difficult to see directly. The forest becomes not a decoration for the works, but an environment with which they are connected in meaning and material.
When natural processes become audible
In the installation Halitus Terrae the artist Henk Schut uses a monumental horn made of recycled brass, suspended between the trees. A low sound is formed on the basis of ecological data collected in the Amsterdam Forest in real time. Changes in the natural environment that are not always accessible to sight here become part of a sound experience.
The work draws attention to the fact that the forest is constantly changing, even when its appearance seems motionless. Data usually presented in figures and graphs receive a physical expression — a sound that can be heard and felt.
A different approach is presented in the work Het Verstrengelde Lijf by Dasha Tsapenko and Pim van den Noort. The artists created a living structure from tree cuttings and mycelium — a network of fungal threads. Visitors are invited to settle among the elements of the installation and to feel themselves inside an image of the underground connections that participate in the life of the forest.
Here what matters is not only what is depicted, but also how a person interacts with the work. Instead of observation from the sidelines, there arises the opportunity to physically feel a space built around the idea of the interdependence of living organisms.
The soil keeps history, and the climate leaves traces
In the work Dust of Time by Sigrid Bannenberg, soil is presented as an archive of natural history. The pollen preserved in it makes it possible to study changes in vegetation and the environment over a long period of time. What is usually perceived as ordinary earth under one's feet turns out to be a carrier of information about the past.
The artist Sanmin Oh in the project Borrowed Skin addresses the impact of climate change on forest soil. Textile sculptures that can serve as wearable costumes create images of a changing natural environment. Their patterns are linked to the rhythms of moisture, drought and underground interconnections.
In the installation Living Soil the design studio Inside Outside makes the life of the soil visually tangible. The project was developed in collaboration with specialists from various fields and scientists from Naturalis, Wageningen University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam research centre. The artistic language here helps to present a complex ecosystem that usually remains out of sight.
Another way to change habitual perception is offered by Bad in het Bos by Jasper Koopmans. A visitor can settle into a bathtub among the trees and listen to the story of an ancient tree. The work draws on the Japanese practice of forest bathing — shinrin-yoku — and invites us to perceive the forest not only visually, but also through hearing, bodily sensations and a pause in the usual rhythm.
The route is complemented by the documentary film The Underground Astronaut by director Marleine van der Werf. In it, evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explores global fungal networks and their role in ecosystems.
The art of the attentive gaze
The works in the exhibition offer different ways of approaching the invisible: hearing data about the environment, feeling the structure of a fungal network, seeing soil as an archive, or imagining the life of the forest from a perspective other than the human one. Scientific and ecological themes are not merely illustrated here — they become part of the visitor's personal experience.
This is the particularity of the project. To become acquainted with the works, one needs to move among the trees, stop, listen closely and pay attention to details. The visitor does not receive a single ready-made explanation of nature, but encounters several ways of perceiving it.
The exhibition also changes the way we look at the forest itself. It appears not only as a place for a walk or rest, but also as a complex system of interconnections in which humans are only one of the parts. Many of these processes existed here before as well; the art route helps to notice them and to see the familiar environment in a new context.
Het Onzichtbare Zichtbaar is open until 1 November 2026. The route is free, and the open-air works are accessible from sunrise to sunset. One should allow about an hour for the walk; a visit to the Boswinkel information centre, where the film is shown and a map is handed out, will increase the total time to roughly one and a half to two hours.
The exhibition in the Amsterdam Forest shows how art can expand perception without a large-scale change to the surrounding space. Sometimes it is enough to look more attentively at what is already nearby — and the familiar landscape opens up as a world that was previously hardly noticed.
