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Roots - 2010
2'36'' blu ray Courtesy dell'artista

I came up with the idea for the Roots project by walking in Central Park. During my previous stay in New York in October 2008, I was amazed by this extraordinary green rectangle surrounded by skyscrapers. It was at that time that I decided to dedicate a work to this park. The Herbarium is exclusively constituted by synthetic images, inspired by iconographic references from traditional herbaria. I represented only plants whose blossoming was supposed to coincide with my three-month residency in New York at Harlem Studio Fellowship (February - May 2009). A further selection was made by adding plants from the Herbarium of Leonart Fuchsʼ, one of the most eminent botanists. His main oeuvre, Historia Stirpium (1542) contains an extraordinary number of plant species. The 3D images are framed and printed on photo paper (fine art print on paper, cm 60x45). As a continuation of the 3D images project, in the Roots video the Herbarium plants are floating away from the ground, showing their eradicated roots, with the background of Central Parkʼs Great Lawn. As the videoʼs gaze follows the ascending plants, in the background the skyscrapers takeoff as space shuttles, liberating their metaphorical roots from the hard ground of Manhattan.