Acrylic on paper. 100 x 200 cm

In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns in Basel, Switzerland, I began doing work that was deeply meaningful to me. I spent days and weeks walking in the forests around Basel. When the roar of the trains, trams and planes stopped, there was silence in the forest. I imagined I could feel and sometimes see the energy of the trees and plants all around me. It was in this silence that I began to create paintings and drawings of mystical plants. At first, I used what I had at home, as all the art shops were closed: A roll of paper, some old acrylic paints, and my narrow balcony.

I was also influenced by the Voynich Manuscript, the enigmatic fifteenth-century codex whose illustrated plants, astrological diagrams, and speculative scientific imagery continue to resist interpretation. Encountering the manuscript during the pandemic profoundly affected my thinking. Its refusal of fixed meaning and its hybrid language, at once scientific, mystical, and poetic, resonated with my own approach. Like the Voynich plants, my forms suggest knowledge without explanation, inviting viewers into a space of uncertainty, intuition, and imaginative projection.

I created a series of 4 - each one depicts the red and white barricade tape that prevented us from crossing the borders into France or Germany.