For its first “Library Interventions” project for 2023, The Arts Office is happy to introduce “Nature Within” by artist Adriana Furim. This work includes three small illustrations that were created with a series of graffiti and a collage pieces, (collage is an artwork that combines images from different sources into a single piece.) The original collage series started with the image of a heart blooming. It was created in 2015 and used as a stencil to paint graffiti art between 2016 to 2020 in four different countries: Brazil, Portugal, Turkey, and Ireland.
The three illustrations on show are part of an internal exploration of the human body as an example of organic life, and of the organs that make up a living creature, creating life and sustaining it. The original heart, brain, and womb were stencils made for public walls and connected with the places and people whose lives happen around them. The heart is the first of organ to develop in embryos, between the 3rd and 8th weeks of a pregnancy. The daffodils, springing out of the heart, can bloom at low temperatures which are harsh conditions to many other species. The connection between the human body and the flower in the painting links to the artist’s change in her own environment – from Brazil’s warm weather to Ireland’s cooler temperatures.
The brain is depicted with Cosmos flowers, which are quite common, edible flowers that live for a long time and attract pollinators, some of which are included in the drawing. Once again, it is a symbolic link between an organ and a plant, showing the connection between humans and the natural world.
The action of translating the images to smaller, paper-based work to be shown indoors for library visitors was a process that required the artist to look into her own ideas of the body. The sense of privacy during the creative process was very different to the exposed practice of graffiti art. The less physical involvement allowed the artist to focus on the sense of being and the details of the body parts, communicating the images in a more private way. Placing them in the library offers you, the viewer, a quiet location for a moment of meditation about your own body and its place in the natural world.
As part of this project, the artist has made a recommended reading list to accompany this work. These books are available for borrowing at the library:
1. The Hidden Spring- Mark Solm
2. Sex, Botani and Empire- Patricia Fara
3. The exquisite machine : the new science of the heart / Sian E. Harding
4. The invention of nature : the adventures ofAlexander von Humboldt, the lost hero of science / Wulf, Andrea
Adriana Furim is a Dublin-based Brazilian visual artist and illustrator who -lived as an immigrant for most of her life in many countries before Ireland, where she has lived for the past 8 years. She works in a variety of media, including tattoos, paper-based work, and collage. In Ireland, she has worked primarily as a tattoo artist and parallel to it creating on art in public spaces, using her illustrations or collage as starting points.
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