Female quantum artist, Jasmine Pradissitto is debuting a new sculpture for the Horniman Museum and Gardens which has just opened this week following months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of her latest artwork is to help bees thrive by the side of one of London’s busiest roads, the South Circular.
The sculpture titled Flower Girl, is made from a material called NoxTek, a geopolymer that absorbs NO2 or nitrogen dioxide pollution from the air. NO2 has been found to mask the smell of flowers and prevent bees from finding food and the sculpture is placed in the museum’s gardens alongside the new bee ‘hotel’.
Jasmine is the only artist with rights to work with the material.
The new work – with the full title ‘Flower Girl – For it was only upon the gentle buzzing of bees that she could awaken’ – takes the form of a sleeping female face, surrounded by giant swirling leaves as she awaits being woken by returning bees. The NoxTek™ material can absorb up to 15% of its own weight in nitrogen dioxide molecules. Rain falling onto the sculpture will wash away the absorbed gas as a harmless liquid, allowing more pollution to be absorbed from the surrounding air.
The hope is that ‘Flower Girl’ will clear a ‘scent path’ for bees living in the bee hotels and in the surrounding area, making it easier for them to find the food sources provided in the Bee Garden.
About the Artist
Dr Jasmine Pradissitto is an International Artist & physicist pioneering pollution absorbing sculptures inspired by mythopoetry and nature in an Anthropocene world.
The Great Pause needs to lead to the Great Realisation.
Without a drastic global change in the next 10 years, our achievements will become futile if we can no longer sustain the most basic of our human needs. I believe one of the ways to enter the new conceptual age, in which we live more symbiotically with the natural world, is to return to the mythopoetry of the past; the ancient stories and practices in which we were merely a speck in a cosmos we did not attempt to control.
From ‘holograms you can touch’ in new and discarded plastics, to sculptures in pollution absorbing ceramics and cyanotype blueprints, I bring together my background as physicist, artist, public speaker and innovator, to address the diminishing air quality and unsustainable practices on an increasingly Anthropogenic world. pradissitto.com
