Questions

This page addresses recurring questions about the work, materials and conceptual approach of Botanica Brasilis.

About the Practice

  • Botanica Brasilis is a contemporary textile art studio exploring how cultivated plants carry ecological and cultural memory. Using linen scrolls, the practice reveals vegetal presence through slow, labour-intensive painting, where repeated gestures allow form to emerge over time, connecting material, attention, and landscapes across distance.

  • Cultivated plants embody the intertwined histories of land, labour, and ecological knowledge. Painting them allows the practice to explore how these landscapes persist in memory and material form, highlighting the ongoing presence of human and environmental labour across time and distance.

  • No. While the work depicts plants, it is not intended as scientific documentation. Botanica Brasilis paints plants as living presences, emerging through memory, labour, and material interaction, emphasizing ecological and cultural traces rather than precise botanical detail.

  • The practice investigates how cultivated plants carry ecological and cultural memory, how material and labour shape perception, and how painting can sustain attention over time. It asks how landscapes, human work, and vegetal presence persist across distance, memory, and repeated encounter.

  • Botanica Brasilis was founded by Brazilian-born artist Cleidi Hearn, who is based in Ireland. The practice develops through her sustained engagement with cultivated plants, material, and the rhythms of slow painting.

  • Botanica Brasilis literally means “plants of Brazil.”

    The name reflects the studio’s focus on plants from Brazil’s cultivated landscapes. It signals a connection to the ecological, cultural, and labour histories embedded in these species, while positioning the work within a contemporary exploration of memory, material, and vegetal presence.

Process and Materials

  • Works are painted slowly on linen scrolls using fine brushes and repeated gestures, allowing plants to emerge through labour, attention, and material interaction. The scrolls are suspended from wooden dowels, preserving the textile’s tactile quality and presenting each plant as a singular presence within a vertical, contemplative format.

  • Linen is an agricultural fibre whose history of cultivation parallels the plants depicted. Its absorbent weave engages deeply with pigment, allowing images to settle gradually into the cloth. This material relationship reinforces the practice’s focus on labour, ecological memory, and the persistence of vegetal presence.

  • Yes. Each painting is the result of a slow, labour-intensive process in which repeated gestures allow plants to emerge over time. While individual species may reappear across works, every piece is a singular encounter between material, attention, and memory.

Land, Labour and Ecological Memory

  • Land and labour are foundational to the practice. Cultivated plants carry the imprint of soil, climate, and human care. Painting mirrors these processes through sustained, repetitive gestures, enacting labour while revealing the material and ecological traces of the landscapes that shaped the plants.

  • Migration frames the work’s relationship to memory and distance. Separated from the landscapes where these plants grow, the practice reconstructs them through recollection, attentive labour, and material engagement. Painting becomes a means of carrying cultivated landscapes across geographies, allowing vegetal presence and ecological memory to persist despite physical displacement.

  • Ecological memory allows the work to trace the histories embedded in cultivated plants—the labour, land, and environmental knowledge that shape them. Through slow, attentive painting on linen, these traces are made visible, connecting material, perception, and memory to reveal how landscapes persist across time and distance.

Encountering the Work

  • There is no correct interpretation.

    Viewers are encouraged to spend time with the surface of the work and allow perception to unfold gradually. Subtle structural relationships within the plant forms often become visible only after sustained looking.

    The work does not demand specialised knowledge. It asks only for time and attention.

  • Botanica Brasilis is based in Cork, Ireland.

    The studio develops one-of-a-kind linen works and participates in exhibitions, acquisitions and institutional collaborations.

  • For enquiries regarding acquisitions, exhibitions, institutional collaborations or press, please contact the studio via the contact page.