SILPHIUM 2023
Series of 23 photographs of different sizes
Chroma-Lux HD Metal Print,
Edition 3 + 1
Exhibition view (Detail):
Hangar Art Centre Brussels, 2025
© Patricia Jacomella Bonola
Silphium traces the colonial history of extinction through the lens of botany and image production. The series of twenty-three photographic collages merges archival floral wallpaper motifs from the Château de Fontainebleau with AI-generated depictions of vanished plant species. By entering the Latin names of extinct flora into a generative algorithm, Jacomella Bonola produces images that oscillate between realism and distortion, digital ghosts of natural forms erased by human expansion.
The work takes its name from Silphium, a plant driven to extinction in the 6th century BCE due to Greek and Roman overharvesting. Through this historical reference, the artist connects ancient patterns of exploitation to contemporary forms of data colonization. Silphium thus becomes both an ecological elegy and a critique of algorithmic vision, exposing the technological mediation that now defines our perception of nature.
Credits: © Patricia Jacomella