How do environmental manifestations redefine the nature-culture boundary?

Degree Project

Forest Bodies

Alessia Maria Concetta Carbonara

Forest Bodies is a series of 13 black and white photographs of bodies. These figures are composed of heterogeneous organic matter—roots, soil, moss, herbaceous plants, branches, and leaves—that take on anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and totemic forms. The bodies are tree roots that have surfaced due to biological processes and atmospheric phenomena, such as windthrows or the collapse of dead trees. Among the events that contributed to their formation is the Vaia Storm of 2018, which profoundly transformed the mountainous landscape of northeastern Italy, giving rise to these agglomerations of matter.

These formations, spontaneous and metamorphic manifestations of life, challenge the canons of biological taxonomy, assuming monstrous, architectural, animalistic, and humanoid forms, which are defined through a human gaze, thus revealing a hybridization between nature and culture.

Through this series, the Forest Bodies become a manifestation of matter in transformation, of the relationship between meteorological events and visual imagination, and of nature's ability to generate archetypal forms that challenge the separation between humans and nature.

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A project made in the course

Bachelor of Design and Art Laurea / Abschluss 25.1

Graduation projects from the Majors in Design and Art First Session 2025.
More projects by Alessia Maria Concetta Carbonara