Silvia Cini's Orchid Project at Rome's Botanical Museum

Silvia Cini's exhibition 'Avant que nature meure' at the Museo Orto Botanico di Roma explores urban biodiversity through orchids. Inspired by Enrico Coleman's 1893-1910 watercolors of wild orchids, Cini began in 2015 to map surviving blooms in Rome. The show features a hand-embroidered tulle dress referencing biologists' lab coats from the Budapest Botanical Garden and Matyò folk tradition, a video of a performer wearing it, galvanoplastic orchid sculptures (a 19th-century technique), raw clay pieces from a workshop at Museo PAV in Turin that will dissolve in rain, and an interactive digital map of Rome's orchids with an open call for updates. The project, part of Italian Council (XI edition), will donate one work to the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, which also holds Coleman's pieces.