In the winter of 2019 I was commissioned by the I.C.C.D to create an herbarium, even if “alberarium” define it better. The title is : Memorie Viventi alberario della grande Guerra (Leaving Memories Treearium of the Grate War)
This book finds it place in a wider project about the first World War and the Remembrance parks of Italy. The Remembrance parks where created after the grate war as “living cemetery” each tree planted was a dead soldier. Trees feed human memory with their own life-cycle, creating a continuity between life and death.
Basically I integrated scientific illustrations and captions with some sort of photographic album, invading the surface of the photos with my painting, creating an analogic dialogue between plants and photos (living memories) insisting on the similarities between trees and the portrayed subjects.
All the trees were chosen by a botanist for the institute, I selected the photos from the I.C.C.D vast archive. I than printed the digital files on to some old paper found in an abandoned typography and glued them on a painted support prepared for this. All the illustrations are realized with acrylic paint, the black background evoke the funerary theme and enhance the light of the living focusing the attention on the subjects.
