This project is signed by Leo Battistelli, an Argentine artist based in Rio de Janeiro, whose ceramic work spans themes of spirituality, alchemy, ecology, and the environment.

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The axis of the book traces back to a research into lichens that Battistelli began in Europe thirty years ago: on a recent journey across the continent, alongside publisher Lucia Bertazzo, who lived in Portugal, and artist and psychoanalyst Katia Canton, the artist revisits and reimagines this research-action project, named in the early 2000s "Lichens for Art Institutions." United by a shared Italian ancestry, the three propose a reflection on contemporary European thought through lichens — organisms that grow in places of environmental purity — as a quiet assertion of nature as the guiding thread of the work.

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Three South American friends, on a mission to translate Europe into images and poetry. Like ruderal plants, affections emerge and a new vision of the world takes hold. Here we find lichens, seeds, affections, and utopias. In a world of coincidences, the journey passed through Padua, the shared ancestral homeland of the three, and the site of the first botanical garden: part of humanity's tradition of trying to understand the incomprehensible.

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Each copy of the book is unique: bound in cork, it features four exclusive collages (out of a total of 180 produced, none repeated) and five photographs — no two alike from one copy to another — worked in a technique that transforms them into painting, and comes accompanied by a piece of reforested wood onto which the ceramics are added in Portuguese stoneware. No two copies are alike.

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The project is co-published by the publisher's Brazilian and Portuguese branches, in an edition of 45 numbered and signed copies, with a planned sequel, Suleando, dedicated to an interpretation of the Global South.

Publisher: Lucia Bertazzo

Prints: Luca Zangrandi

Production : Eudóxia Bertazzo e Shakti Carbonari

Bookbiding: Palmarium e Silvia Pontes

Suport: Artes e Ofícios

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