EN TIBI: Here for You a Smiling Garden of Everlasting Flowers

Some installation views of my solo exhibition at Rome Botanical Gardens (Musee La Sapienza) in 2023. The title of this show refers to the En Tibi herbarium, an early book of plant specimens compiled by an unknown Italian botanist in the 16th C, which was inscribed with the Latin: En tibi perpetuis ridentem floribus hortums (Here for you a smiling garden of everlasting flowers). The paintings are inspired by herbaria from the Natural History Museum collection in Florence (specifically a section that belonged to the famous botanist Odoardo Beccari) and La Sapienza in Rome, among other archives, as well as historic engravings and maps. The exhibition considers both the care given to plants by botanists but also the complicated and unexpected repercussions of colonial botanical history.