The project presents an installation of three vases with sculptures of decellularized flowers and a video of their posthumous dreams made with 3D Mapping.
Presented:
Marina Gisich Gallery, RU
“Ghost Plants” is an artistic investigation of the materiality of vegetal entities, life, and death of plants. The work is built upon the biotechnological process of decellularizing biological materials.
Decellularization is the complete removal of all cellular components from the tissue while preserving its extracellular matrix. In this case, removing the vegetal cells and preserving the carbohydrate cellulose structure.
Portfolio
Ghost Plants
Working with the technique of decellularization and seeing the scaffold without cells made me face my own mortality. Are we more than a configuration of cells? What happens after we remove the properties of life?
Interpreting the physiological abilities of plants to feel touch, light, and exchange information with the surroundings as the presence of “a cognate soul” allows us to create a new dimension of vegetative existence on the other side of life. As humans, we have developed strategies to face death and the afterlife.
Could we extend that belief in the afterlife to another species? What consequences could bring expanding the anthropocentric idea of an afterlife to other species?
Delphiniums socially symbolize cheerfulness and goodwill. Delphiniums are used to communicate encouragement and joy, as well as to remember loved ones who have passed. In the history of Bioart, the plant Delphiniums are recognized as the first living organism presented in a gallery, in 1936 Edward Steichen showcased at the MoMA new varieties of Delphinium developed through twenty-six years of cross-breeding and selection.
With the help of technological mediation, we carry out a phantasmagoric resurrection of emptied vegetative structures, transferring life to a new level of digital existence.