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.
The first issue is dedicated to Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Here is an excerpt:
There is a particular sense of wonder in opening a bottle of Giant Sequoia essential oil. The scent is resinous, woody, penetrating — from a tree that can rise beyond a hundred metres and live for three thousand years, an essence is drawn that concentrates this vastness, as if time itself became portable. The time of the Sequoia is not the time of the diary. It is the time in which bark thickens layer upon layer, in which roots intertwine with other roots, in which resistance accumulates without haste.
You can receive a free PDF copy by writing to us via the WhatsApp button on the site. Read more about Materia Viva, or continue to the next issue – Melissa.
