Biophilia
2023
My new experimental Biophilia series, is featured in ArtDoc Magazine's Healing Nature exhibition. Biophilia is defined as the innate human instinct to connect with nature and other living beings. The term is derived from the Greek words for “life” and “love;” just the prescription we need to soothe what ails us when we are feeling tethered to technology yet disconnected from the natural world. Our instinctive need to connect with nature is what has been missing from our lives; that nagging feeling, or dis-ease, that there must be something more, something deeper that unifies all living things.
With the explosion of physical and mental health crises in the pandemic era, physicians are now prescribing time spent in nature as a way back to wellness. Nature therapy has been shown to help with depression, pain reduction, PTSD, dementia, obesity, and immunity. Interactions with natural environments enhance social connections, sense of place, and critically, foster an intrinsic reverence for and stewardship of nature so needed at this moment in time.
Incorporating the Japanese concept of shinrin yoku or Forest Bathing that encourages health and wellbeing in the presence of nature, in this series of images, I layer my photographs of natural flora and fauna with images of anatomic and clinical pathology, effectively applying nature’s medicine directly inside the body’s cells at the nano-level to offer imagery that helps manifest healing. These glowing diorama-like cells create mysterious, magical snowglobe microcosms we can go within to envision a meditative healing space inside ourselves, while encouraging us to step out of the virtual world and into nature's healing presence.
