orchid disorder (2021)
installation
Resin, paper, plastic 3D printed
(10x5x2, 3x2x1, 1x0,5x0.2 m)
The garden, since its origins in ancient Egypt, has been an exercise of control and power over the non-human. By demarcating and designing a vegetal architecture, a post-natural alteration occurs, as it has always been conceived from the perspective of sanitization and anthropomorphization of nature. The soil thus becomes an inert medium, a mere support on which to design the distorted idea of beauty associated with nature. Roots are anti-architectural, as they are the only ones capable of evading human design or control.
Orchid Disorder is a sculptural installation that pierces through the walls of the room, modifying the perception of the liminal space that divides the visible from the invisible. What lies behind the processes of standardization and control of the non-human?
Today, our reality is subordinated to images that are stored, altered, and generate new ones. The modeling of images by artificial intelligence selects and filters thousands of images in a database. In this way, the image loses its own root, moving away from human dependency towards mechanical reproduction. Somehow, this process replicates the idea of the garden as a mechanism of material decontextualization. In this case, it is a virtual decontextualization for artificial learning.
The roots are made of images printed on paper, from which broken orchids made in 3D printing emerge. The orchid acts here as a historical symbol of beauty, being the most commercialized flower on the planet. These semi-flowers arise from the deconstruction of a database of orchid images. Thus, a new root and a new flower are created: those that have been completely separated from their original source.
The action of breaking and weightless invasion aims to virtualize the space they impact. Orchid Disorder proposes a space for estrangement, an imagined and underground space, where the boundaries between the real and the virtual are blurred.
at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes
part of ‘Jardín Satélite’, curated by Giberto González and Silvia Navarro.