The Imaginary Herbarium of the Island. A conversation on the threshold.

Our body is the battleground more than ever.

In addition to our biological life cycles, we are experiencing new challenges that put our lives on a constant threshold - in anthropology the threshold is the space where an individual does not belong to her/his past anymore and is waiting for a new social and personal status.

These new patterns are changing the old layout of individuals, families, communities and countries (migration, economical and political instability, ageing population, gender fluidity, etc.)

How does the complexity of these new patterns impact on our body?

Should we re-define the meaning of identity and roots and re-set ourselves?

Is this disorientating time making us more lonely and frail? Is it exciting or exhausting?

Where is home?

I want to explore this journey, our ability to adapt and pay tribute to the human spirit.

I sowed breasts in the garden

For the child I never had, never was, I am

The ages of the nipple - Source: Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1768-1841

I AM AN ANATOMICAL BOTANIST

Great joy and pride: 3 images of my Imaginary Herbaria had been acquired by the Wellcome Collection

https://wellcomecollection.org/works?query=alessandra%20pirovano

For my images I use historical anatomical plates. I paint them with ink, pastels and graphite to compose my Imaginary Herbaria.

It is a joy to unearth some forgotten masterpieces of imagination and precision and take them outside the rooms of private collectors and international auction houses.

The Imaginary Herbarium of Doctor James Barry

A human journey.

Margaret Ann Balkley was born in 1795 and in order to be admitted to university and practice medicine, took on the name of James Miranda Barry (at that time women were not permitted to enter university). She was a great pioneering reformer who fought for better sanitation and medical care for soldiers and their families. She was the first British surgeon to perform a successful Caesarium section in 1826. In 1865, after a brilliant career as General Inspector of Army Hospitals, she died in London. The Imaginary Herbarium is a fictional journal that tells the story of Dr Barry playing with her books of anatomy and writing about her elusive and secluded private life.

Matrilineal - The Imaginary Herbarium of a Mother

Visual history of placentae, turned into trees

Bless me with smiles

It is the story of a secret sea garden where children and animals are waiting to be born and talk to each other about expectations, fears, dreams on their future life.

Born a Third Time - The Imaginary Herbarium of Alexina B

Fictional journal of the 18th century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, aka Alexina B. (Her memoirs published by Michel Foucault) I imagined her writing about the anatomists' inflexible rules on gender.

Also on https://twitter.com/italicseed

My Imaginary Herbaria - A.P.

The Imaginary Herbarium of the Island. A conversation on the threshold.

No comments:

Translate

I AM AN ANATOMICAL BOTANIST

Followers