Half-plant, half-human - tales of the mysterious mandrake

Hi Leonie, tell us a bit about yourself and your project.

Hi, I’m Leonie Brandner. I have always been a maker - I am a sculptor, I do fabric work, embroidery and ceramics. I grew up in Switzerland and went to the Chelsea College of Art in London to study fine art. Then I moved to Germany, then The Hague to do my MA in Artistic Research at the Royal Academy.

After my MA, I did a short course in ethnobotany and ethnomedicine at the University of Zurich. It was a deepdive into the relationship between plants and humans, how plants are part of culture, and what we use them for.

During one lecture, we were shown a picture of a mandrake - I soon found out it is the only plant in European contexts that is depicted as half-plant, half-person. I thought that’s strange. Why? What’s its history? I started looking into it. Mandrake was used medicinally in ancient Greece and Rome as a narcotic in surgeries - it enabled some of the first surgeries to happen. There is also a prevalent history of using mandrake as a sleeping aid, an aphrodisiac and a gynaecological remedy for women.

The plant still grows on the south side of the Alps, in the Mediterranean area. Its story, as told by the Grimm brothers in 1816, is that if a man who comes from a family of thieves is hanged innocently, a mandrake will grow at the gallows. The mandrake has a deadly scream and the only way to uproot it safely is to make the sign of the cross over the plant. Then you half dig it out of the ground, attach a dog to the plant, (see this image on Europeana.eu) run away, cover your ears, and get the dog to pull the plant out by giving it food. The dog dies because of the deadly screams.

Once uprooted, you have to look after the plant, clothe it and feed it. Then it will give you knowledge about the future, tell you what your enemies are thinking and give you money and children.

I’m a visual artist primarily and I work in close collaboration with the opera singer Nina Guo. I told her about this forgotten story and we started working on a sung performance, which premiered in September 2024.

Simultaneously I was working on a written record of my research into the mandrake. Eventually I had a short manuscript and a friend of mine encouraged me to pitch it to a publisher. Onomatopee, a Dutch art theory publisher, liked it but said it was too short so I started writing and rewriting, working with an editor who helped me tease out the material I was dealing with and connect everything together.

Tell us a bit about how you use Europeana.eu

Lots of the plant images in the book I took on my phone when I visited different botanical gardens. I also wanted archival material but when you take images from the internet, it’s sometimes incredibly difficult to find and credit the sources. A lot of the depictions of the mandrake are not in copyright because of their age, but you still need to know who owns them. That’s why I started using Europeana - because it was easy to trace what I could or could not use.

I searched in different languages. I typed in ‘mandrake’ and ‘mandragora’ (its Latin name) in English and German, and also tried French and found different things. I downloaded the images I liked and made a folder for the graphic designer I was working with, who edited them, for example by removing the background if it was distracting.

What has been your best find on Europeana.eu so far?

There are three species of mandrake, two grow in Europe and one is from the Himalayas. I found a lot less mythological material about the Himalayan variety, probably because of language barriers and maybe because it might not have featured as heavily in culture and mythology as its European relatives. But I found a herbarium cut of the Himalayan mandrake on Europeana.eu, which was as close as I could get to it.

Where do you find inspiration?

Life! I read books on biology, archaeology, history. I like going to museums. I also get inspiration through random encounters like when I went to an archaeological site on holiday and found evidence of dog sacrifices - I didn’t expect that! I don’t get too scared about what my next project is going to be. I stumble across something and I follow it up. A lot of my work is replying to open calls and opportunities for new funding.

I’m drawn to objects that don’t seem to make sense. I like trying to figure out something from the past in a new contemporary context. As an artist, I can make interpretations and reimaginings of what something could be.

One artist I really like is Tai Shani, she won the 2019 Turner Prize. She’s thoughtful about the way she uses language and what she raises with her work in terms of politics. She’s very clear and generous both in her visual and spoken language which I appreciate as a way of how to stand in the world and what to advocate for.

What plans do you have for the future?

I have started researching a bizarre archaeological object found in Germany, Switzerland and France. It is a mysterious object dating back to the bronze age and nobody really knows anything about it or knows what it was used for. I’m interested in what the answer is, but also in whether we need the answer to this. Can we be ok with not knowing?

Find out more about Leonie’s work on her website, on Instagram and on Onomatopee.net.