< Live Streams
Botánico
Botanical
2009
Digital print on paper
Essex Collection of Art from Latin America
This lush, tropical landscape is not all that it seems. The photographic print depicts a portion of the Zurich University Botanical Garden, a large institution with a collection of over eight thousand species of plants. The work explores the way the tropics are collected, classified and displayed in museums, gardens and photographs. The artist complicates this Western tradition through the photograph’s densely packed composition —it is neither landscape nor a still life—hinting that the non-human world is not as easily separated, categorised and classifiable as we may think.
Cynthia Soto
Costa Rica, 1969
Cinthya Soto is a Costa Rican artist based in Zurich, Switzerland. With a background in architecture, fine art and film, her practice is largely based on photography, a medium she uses to explore the notion of artifice both in modes of representation and in human relations to the environment. She works with medium format analogue photography, exploring through installation and meta-photographic gestures the staging of images in cultures of display. Her work has been exhibited widely in Latin America and Europe, including at the Pabellón Latinoamericano del IILA at the 52th Venice Biennale in 2007 and the VIII Bienal de Cuenca in 2004.
.
Live Streams is curated by Lisa Blackmore (School of Philosophy & Art History and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex), Diego Chocano (Assistant Curator of Essex Collection of Art from Latin America/University Art Collections) and Emilio Chapela (Artist and Research Assistant at the University of Essex). This website was built by David Medina.
Art Exchange is the University of Essex’s on-campus gallery dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art from emerging and established international artists. It is directed by Jess Twyman.
