The Tea ChariotInstallation by Rafram Chaddad, Amelie Seeger, Sebastian Giussani as part of the Water & Sound Festival 2026

24.07. – 01.08.2026 at Dominikanerkirche

Open: Fri, 24.7. – Sun, 26.7. und Wed, 29.7. – Sat, 1.8.,  1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. 

During the Water & Sound Festival, a walk-through art installation based on the theme “Waterways – Canals, Sea Routes, Empire” will be created in the former Dominican Church of St. Magdalena. At its center is a living tea plant in a glass case—a Wardian case—surrounded by sound, cartography, light, and space.

“The Tea Chariot” is a process-oriented collaboration between Rafram Chaddad, an artist based in Tunis and Turin; Sebastian Giussani, an artist from Augsburg; set and costume designer Amelie Seeger; and Girisha Fernando, who is providing conceptual guidance for the project. Together, they are creating a sculptural and sound-art work in which tea appears as the botanical protagonist of global interconnections: as a plant that has crossed oceans and canals through trade, espionage, theft, colonialism, and ritual. The installation makes visible and tangible how globalization, botanical espionage, and waterways are interconnected.

The starting point for the installation is a tea plant in a terrarium, inspired by the historic Wardian case. Beginning in 1829, this enclosed glass case system revolutionized the global transport of living plants, as it significantly increased their chances of survival on long sea voyages. In the mid-19th century, the Scottish botanist Robert Fortune used this technique on behalf of the British East India Company to smuggle thousands of tea plants and seeds from China to India, circumventing Chinese export bans. This transfer of plants led to the establishment of tea plantations in Assam and Darjeeling, which gradually replaced China as the leading tea-exporting region.

A comission by »BBK – Verbindungslinien« funded by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst.

Kulturamt der Stadt Augsburg in cooperation with UNESCO-Welterbe-Büro und Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg | Artistic Director: Girisha Fernando

Full festival programm: www.waterandsound.de

We cordially invite everyone interested to the opening on Thursday, July 23, 2026, at 7 p.m., at Dominikanerkirche!