The event at Paque Ciência e Tecnologia da USP approaches the relationship between art and science and raises awareness of natural elements through the creation of works by workshop participants.
By Tiago Cesquim
03/07/2023 10:45 a.m.
On Saturday, March 11th, Parque CienTec da USP is promoting a special program dedicated to the exhibition Tramas da Vida – arte e botânica (Weaves of Life – art and botany), by artist Débora Amaral. At 10 a.m., the artist will welcome children for an awareness-raising visit, followed by a walk around the park and a clay workshop in which the little ones will be able to create their own artworks with elements collected during the visit. At 12:30 p.m., Débora Amaral and Suzana Ursi, who is the director of CienTec and curator of the exhibition, give a presentation in which they talk about the relationship between art and science and give details about the conception of the works.
The exhibition presents a series of photographic records of microscopic plant sections. Original slides can be seen in the microscopes that make up the exhibition. Photo: Caian Gerolamo
Upon knowing Débora Amaral’s work, Suzana Ursi saw a deep relation with science, which prompted the invitation to the exhibition at Parque CienTec. “The artist is inspired by elements from nature in her creations, with references to important fields of Biology, such as Botany, when she highlights cipi and lichens, or Cell Biology when she presents her own interpretation of these structures,” she says. Ursi also highlights “the important relationships that exist in the fabrics of life, which can easily lead us to food webs, energy flows, among other concepts studied by Ecology”.
The long-term exhibition on display at CienTec features a series of works by the artist using natural materials and shapes that refer to organic elements. “In this series of works my visual research is born from observing botanical anatomy in which lianas, internodes, rhizomes, lichens, cells are visual texts telling us about resistance, diversity, trajectories, forms, delicacies. Poeticizing botanical structures and their natural phenomena, my work has become sculptures and art objects,” tells Débora Amaral.
Débora Amaral’s artworks in the exhibition bring natural elements and representations into dialog with botany. Curator Suzana Ursi seeks to sensitize visitors and minimize “botanical imperception”.
In the first part of Saturday’s activities, the artist, who is also an educator and author of the book A expressão criativa da argila com crianças (The Creative Expression of clay with Children), will give a guided tour of the exhibition, showing how the works were composed and their symbolic representation. On the way to the workshop room, she will help the children select the materials that will make up the works created during the workshop, together with the clay. Some of the material produced will be included in the exhibition.
According to Débora Amaral, nature is the big school for the Children, and “when they are interacting and playing with the earth, living matter, and all this generous botanical collection present in the Park, it provides a repertoire of multiple experiences, and contact with nature establishes an interaction of poetic synergy.”
After the action, the artist returns to the exhibition hall, this time together with curator Suzana Ursi, to welcome guests and visitors to the Park. The aim is to explain the conception of the project in detail, talking about representative and technical issues and, especially, the relation between the language used and science. The space includes microscopes and explanatory posters showing details invisible to the naked eye that make up plant cells, one of the inspirational motifs of the exhibition.
Suzana Ursi also relates that the exhibition should bring the public closer to nature. “Research shows that human beings (especially in urban environments) suffer from the so-called ‘botanical imperception’, which means that they don’t recognize plants as important beings with their own characteristics, but rather as a mere backdrop for animal life. This exhibition will certainly broaden everyone’s perception of plants.”
About the Exhibition
The exhibition Tramas da Vida – arte e botânica (Weaves of Life – art and botany) brings together science and art to promote knowledge with enchantment. The artist Débora Amaral, who weaves the Tramas da Vida in threads, proposes in each thread an underlying neural path that strengthens of synapses in humankind’s knowledge of itself.
The poetics of lines evoke the communion of being with nature, in which the outline of rhizomes, internodes, cells, fungi, and vines are visual texts. In the comings and goings of the threads, the vine-like forms stick to the ground for their entire lives, while growing towards the abundant light, forming the sublime canopy of the forest.
At the same time, Prof. Suzana Ursi, director of the Parque Cientec, is integrating elements of the project coordinated by Prof. Veronica Angyalossy, from the Botany Department of USP’s Biosciences Institute, into Tramas da Vida, anatomical images seen under an optical microscope, with the inside of forest cypress trees, revealing the structures that make up the interior of plants.
SERVICE
Exposição Tramas da Vida – arte e botânica
Oficina de modelagem com argila para crianças and Encontro com a artista e curadora
When | 03/11/2023
Time | At 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (Workshop)
12:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Encontro)
Where | Parque de CienTec da USP
Avenida Miguel Stefno, 4200 – Água Funda – São Paulo – SP
How much | Free
Translated by Lara Yoshime Shizuko Fukushima