CRISTINA DE PAOLA

Plants: apparently immobile beings, silent before the passing of time and events; yet they are always around us and, above all, they exist before us. Since the beginning of its existence, planet Earth has been a container of life forms, and among these, plant life has been able to generate an ideal atmosphere for the formation of a multifaceted ecosystem. And it is they, the plants, who generate forms, continuous metamorphoses, capable of adapting and generating energy for others and for themselves.

The work carried out during TRACCIATI – AIR Non Reserved Artist in Residence at Non Riservato and Cascina Biblioteca sees the plant world as the main field of visual research. The photographs, taken using an analogue microscope inside the Cascina Biblioteca garden, demonstrate a micro-system within a macro-system; during the period of residence it was inevitable to notice the existence of a combination, a collaboration between the animal world and the plant world.

Agriculture thus becomes a meaningful operation, not only dictated by the need for subsistence or by the simple satisfaction of being able to independently generate food to bring to the table, but by an intrinsic connection between two worlds. The analogue microscope, through which an almost taxonomic partial collection of the plants present in the garden was carried out, was decontextualised from its main scientific function to become a camera lucida through which to recreate, thanks to sunlight, textures, mappings, paths, shapes, and colours.

Another dimension, fascinating, but still alive and capable of change: we are led to have a completely benevolent conception of nature and everything that transcends it, but it is also true that it brings with it problems of a different kind. Among the plants photographed there are younger and older ones, and there are also diseased plants. The transmission of bacteria and viruses in plants often occurs, albeit silently, on a very large scale.