After et Fiat Lux

The pictures of the project Et Fiat Lux feature simulacra, perfect imitations of real flowers. The copies are made of plastic, nylon and polyester, and are commonly used for scientific purposes, or sold as articles for commercial or residential decoration – consumer products. The industries that realize them are specialized in different production processes and are located in the Guangdong area (China), where this business started as early as 1980. Since then, every year thousands of flowers are exported to a great number of countries in the world. The project Et Fiat Lux involved the folding of over two hundred flowers into ikebans, according to the traditional Japanese art of flowers cut. The meticulous compositions also echo the aesthetics of Dutch Baroque still life paintings (nature morte), producing an initially familiar image for the viewer, that actually stems from a carefully built trans-historical and trans-cultural configuration. The subject and the result of the work rely on its ambiguity: the bouquets look composed of real fresh flowers from afar, and only by getting closer it is possible to notice that they are fake. Their liveness is constantly evoked by the light, and by the sculptural precision of the bouquets itself. The light becomes the source of action, the principle of the movement able to transform the plastic materials into an archetypical example of beauty. The photographic series After Et Fiat Lux are taken with the old tungsten film and the same ikebana are composted just with the vegetal bushes (without flowers), while the presence of flowers is rather evoked by the light. The light irradiation occurs in the darkroom, after the film exposure, and it is controlled by the shielding, to allow a selective passage of the light. The resulting image is animated by the red glows that create the illusion of a flower. In this series, the flowers are not present, but the light suggests the forms and shapes of them.