With her project 'Flora Brasiliensis 3.0,' Elsa Leydier confronts dominant imagery that shaped the Western perception of Brazil, where the artist lives and works part of the year. The artist reinterprets the Flora Brasiliensis, a 19th-century encyclopedia created by German and Austrian naturalists that greatly influenced European perceptions of Brazilian nature.
Leydier digitally intervenes on contemporary encyclopedia photographs or on her personal archives of plants using scanning and editing software. She deliberately introduces distortions and alterations to emphasize the inherent gaps and limitations in our attempts to represent nature.
The resulting images are presented through three different mediums: a framed fine art print, a digital file stored on a USB key, and an NFT stored on a blockchain. Each image variation exists in three different storage media and formats. With this, Leydier hopes to address the fragility and uncertain nature of current conservation methods for preserving both art and nature.
This work is part of a larger project by Elsa Leydier, The Disobediences, that refers to acts of resistance against the status quo. It challenges conventional norms and practices that perpetuate the exploitation of nature and women, and reflects on stereotypical depictions of both. With ecofeminism at the core of this project, it emphasises the need for ecological balance and gender equality. The movement questions the hierarchical structures of society and envisions a world free from oppression and domination. The Disobediences consists of five distinct parts, that collectively weave a network of resistance and hope.