I am among the artists chosen for the Herbarium, a printed exhibition project curated by Dr. Cornelia Lauf and Flavia Prestininzi. This visual catalogue is part of Sztuka i Dokumentacja, an extensive Polish academic publication edited by Dr Lauf and Lukasz Guzek in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the Botanical Garden of Rome, with Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge and the Normale University of Pisa serving on the advisory board.
–
The Herbarium involves artists and authors from different backgrounds, nationalities and disciplines, each of whom has reinterpreted one of the many botanical species depicted with incredible accuracy in the famous fresco of the Garden of Livia, from 40 bc, exhibited today at the National Roman Museum, and originally part of the Villa of Livia complex. The aim of the book was to re-imagine biodiversity for today from an ancient point of view.
–
I personally worked on the quince tree depicted in the Roman fresco, which is also the infamous apple of discord from Greek mythology. The phrase “to the fairest one” carried on the scroll by the bees, an iconological symbol of the divine, is a reference to the challenge of the goddess of envy Eris in the Judgement of Paris that led to the Trojan War, represented by the insidious scorpion waiting hidden among the juicy apples, ready to sting. Swipe for close ups, the original fresco and the book.
