Claudia Losi | Biotopes
During her 2012-13 residence in the Orta–Les Moulins studio, Claudia Losi started to explore the idea of diverse forms of symbiosis marking the multiple possibilities of co-existence between animal and plant organisms. The artist has moved on to the idea of exploring forms of interdependence between the different species, how they develop in order to survive, and how the evolutionary mode of the original function of a species may change into something different. The idea of a non-linear, at times unpredictable, development becomes an important observational key for the dynamics governing these changes with not only climate and environmental, but also cultural, implications.
The project, called Biotopes, consisted of Fabric-Concrete forms to be placed in an industrial brownfield area in the countryside near Paris, a place of transformation and change where greenery seemed to have colonised again the crevices left vacant by demolition or current renovation attempts. Animals and plants “in transition” could inhabit those spaces as well with the same qualities and features: creating a third dimension, a biological corridor showing the way on to a non-endogamous physiological and analytical imagination.
From a formal point of view, Claudia Losi has expressed this tension and morphological instability through a specific choice of materials in an articulated working process: starting with drawings and then with staffed fabric forms to be used as moulds for concrete structures, taking inspiration from early 20th-century rocailles.
The last, but not least, stage consists in an additional development provided by the natural environment where the sculptures will be placed, to be colonised and enveloped by the natural ecosystem.
The four pieces acquired by the Collezione (Biotope I, II, III, IV) partially refer to real-life symbiotic cases (seaweeds coupled with a salamander, deer and the birds feeding off their parasites) or imagined ones, drawing their inspiration from the iconography of Medieval bestiaries and the Baroque (lichen on stone and deer antlers), now become popular cultural heritage.
From 2014 to 2021 the sculptures have been installed in the garden outside Collezione Maramotti.
The artist
In her interest for natural sciences, as well as for historical and anthropological aspects of phenomena, Claudia Losi uses multiple techniques like sculpture, embroidery, photography, drawing, video, by emphasizing in her work the rhythm of spatial transformation both as natural element and as linked to human development. Her creative tension focuses on an intimate gaze cast on the world but also on the scientific analysis of phenomena. Collective projects, performances, painstaking manual work, long treks, are moments of an artistic narration aiming at generating new spaces of human interaction.