Artwork

Artist Siobhán McDonald revisited historical processes of botanic image making to create drawings and 3D works of plants that coexist with toxicity. Using air-borne pollutants collected from EU cities, ash and film footage from EU volcanoes, she created drawings, paintings and film works to show how plants and humans are adapting to air pollution, both now and historically. These included ...

• Breathe, a multi-platform project, responding to the broader context of air and how our breathing has changed due to the long process of human evolution and the fact that everything breathes, and everything is interconnected through breath. The film weaves together narratives of studies in human breath, medicine and ancient plant remedies to explore the idea of coexistence in a world moved by invisible networks.

• Connected by Air, which takes as its subject the co-existence between the lungs of the earth, humans and plants. The project explores a selection of major European volcanoes and points to the cycle of the earth breathing within the carbon cycle of our ecosystems. The installation is composed of a series of glass prisms embellished from the repeated application of thin, transparent layers of pigment made from volcanic ash to form an optical quality surface.

Additional details

A collaboration between Giorgio Sancristoforo and Valentina Paracchini, Mauro Petrillo, Vittorio Forcina, Paolo Peerani.

Giorgio Sancristoforo website.

More about the work on the artist’s website.