In-sectum

Brazil, 2019

These pictures are visual meditations about the Amazon, inspired during the art residency Labverde (www.labverde.com), in August 2019. The subject is the forest but the point of view is not that of a human: thanks to the technical support of Nikon Italia, I had the possibility to use an IR modified sensor Nikon D7000 with which I tried “to see” the forest from the point of view of other living beings, such as insects. Actually, insects cannot see the IR wavelights but most of them are sensitive to the UV or other wavelights. UV photography is very complicated to realize inside a thick forest so, I decided to freely interpret the insects’ perspective with IR photography.

Insects are fundamental foundation of the food chain that supports our existence, along with all the other life on the planet. Scientists say that a crash in insect numbers risks “ecological Armageddon” in a “bottom-up trophic cascade”. It is a system-wide effect. Recent studies both in tropical forests and in temperate forests, all over the world, showed a collapse in the number of insects between 75% and 98% over the last three decades. The culprit by far is global warming. The word insecta derives from Latin in-sectum meaning “which is cut” to define the class of animals, belonging to Arthropoda, which have their body divided into parts. Conversely, starting from this definition, I want to question the concept of feeling “divided” from the environment that permeates humankind’s perspective of the world: stepping into the shoes (in this case, into the eyes) of another living being should help us re-framing our own perception of the environment and how we consider the other living beings, from a vision of separation and domination to the awareness of being just a part of the whole ecosystem. The project in-sectum has been developed together with Italian violinist Sara Michieletto. An experimental video has been produced with the sounds and visuals recorded in the forest.

The hand-written texts are extracts from the book “The songs of trees” by David George Haskell. The drawings are lines freely extracted from each image. 

This is part of my meditation process: observing the photo, recognizing lines, drawing and writing text while following the pattern. At every word, I stop and let it sink inside myself. Repeating everything again and again as a visual mantra, trying to absorb the memories of my experience into the forest. Trying to see the world as an insect does.

Photos fine art prints, 110×74 cm, on cotton paper mounted on d-Bond
Hand made drawings, 74×53 cm, black ink on cotton paper