The Botanica series, originally commissioned by Plart—an Italian foundation devoted to researching plastics and resins— investigates the prehistory of synthetic polymers, focusing on the age of inquiry and experimentation that preceded our current era of oil dependency. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, natural polymers were extracted from plants and animal derivatives using new scientific approaches. The works in this series incorporate some of the earliest known polymers, including copal (a subfossil state of amber), shellac (a polymer extracted from insect excrement), and bois durci (a nineteenth-century material composed of wood dust, pigment, and animal blood).
Gallery label from 2022
