Materia Viva is a work in progress dedicated to aromatic raw materials: resins, plants, woods, essences, balsams, flowers, seeds, roots.

It arises where scent, word, image, and research meet. Of each material, what matters is not only its effect, but everything that accompanies it: where it comes from, which landscape generates it, which hands have gathered it, how it has become a symbol.

It is at once a cultural notebook and a sensory experience. Each material is traced back to its origin, through lands and customs, ancient trade routes, archives, faces, and sudden intuitions. Starting from a resin, a wood, a flower, the thread is followed: clues are gathered, the scent is listened to, an image is pursued, until a form surfaces.

Part of this work lives in texts and digital publications; another part becomes original artwork, printed in fine art.

One issue of Materia Viva is dedicated to Melissa (Melissa officinalis). Here is an excerpt:

The diaphragm opens — the breath catches a citrine brightness. The citrus note spreads over a movement that has already happened in the body — the breath returns to where perhaps a silence had been held. Melissa welcomes with its fragrance, carrying with it a story intimately bound to sweetness and bees. Its name is Greek and means bee. It is perhaps in the figure of the hidden nurse, keeper of a sweetness that does not proclaim itself, that Melissa officinalis still finds today its most ancient gesture: to gladden the heart, to tend the breath, to scent the hive so that the swarm chooses to stay.

You can receive a free PDF copy by writing to us via the WhatsApp button on the site.