2020-2023
Hierarchical Relations, Evolutionary Ladders and Structures of Power is a project that explores ideas of invisibility in relation to traditional Western perspectives of the natural world.
The works overlap engraved museum glass and silkscreened historical illustrations, creating palimpsestic compositions in which shadows merge with images, revealing patterns, projections and invisible worldviews. Merging philosophical and early scientific diagrams, the project traces the genealogies of hierarchical thinking rooted in Western cultural cosmologies.
Among others, the project analyzes the principles proposed by Aristotle’s Scala Naturae as a hierarchy of beings based on preconceived notions of complexity, and traces its integration over time into other Western disciplines, such as the Christian philosophy of Ramon Llull (Scala of Intellect), the scholastic development of genealogy, linguistics and logic, the natural philosophy of Charles Bonnet (Idée d’une échelle des êtres naturelles), or the theory of evolution illustrated by Ernst Haeckel (Pedigree of Man) and Charles Darwin, among others.
Looking at the symbology of tree diagrams —from the Sumerian Tree of Life to Enlightenment evolutionary models, the project overlaps different systems of knowledge, cosmological worldviews, and assumptions underlying Western relationships to nature.
Engraved museum glass and silkscreen on paper Munken Pure. Shadow of engraved glass.
60x60cm – series of 5
Idea of a balance between natural beings (after Charles Bonnet)
Interactive sculpture
Engraved fossil marble
70x70x20 cm