Sprawling Neobiotic Chimera (after Banks' Florilegium)

This new work by Rose Briccetti was created as a companion to the UCSB Library exhibition "Botanical Illustrations and Scientific Discovery-- Joseph Banks and the Exploration of the South Pacific, 1768-1771". 

Sprawling Neobiotic Chimera is artist Rose Briccetti’s vision of a fictional plant, composed of carefully isolated details of the foreign species depicted in Banks' Florilegium that now colonize the UCSB campus. The invented plant reaches up and out from its roots, with tentacle-like arms and bursting leaves, spreading in new directions. This botanic sprawl, reaching into new lands, is both a by-product of, and metaphor for, the activity of human exploration whose efforts have spread, recombined, and altered lands and cultures across the globe. Briccetti uses the style of a botanical illustration, pushing the form towards its edges through the image's dramatic density and scale.

Rose Briccetti is an artist, a lecturer in UCSB’s Art Department, and a teaching fellow in the College of Creative Studies. Her multi-media practice examines the intersections of femininity, cultural stories, and natural history. She has exhibited her work throughout the country at venues including at SOMArts, San Francisco; The Dickinson Museum Center, Dickinson, ND; Pico House Gallery, Los Angeles; and CSU Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA. More about Rose Briccetti can be found at https://www.rosebriccetti.com/