IN NATURE NOTHING EXISTS ALONE is the latest environmental work by Claudia Comte presented within Hypermaremma 2022. Spanning over one hundred meters in length, it represents her most extended site-specific installation of this body of work yet. Entirely composed of pine trunks from Monte Amiata – according to the selective thinning cycle of forests in order to regenerate themselves on a controlled basis – Comte employs a natural material to convey a message that emphasises the origins of the territory by quoting a phrase from the American biologist and scientist Rachel Carson. In her essay “Silent Spring” (1962), Carson anticipated some of the most serious matters related to the environment and the sustainability of the Earth ecosystem, stressing the responsibility of human beings in their being a tyrant over the planet and its living beings, and focusing mainly against DDT and pesticide abuse.

With this intervention, Claudia Comte thus intends to encourage the viewer to trigger a consideration on human beings’ relationship with nature and the planet’s life cycle, where everything is connected in a perfect composition.

This work is among the most imposing environmental installations that the artist creates to investigate topics dear to her such as climate change, ecology, and global pollution, based precisely on the observation of the rules of nature and its mutability.

Born and raised in a small village in the Swiss countryside not far from Lausanne, the artist often inserts a strong autobiographical component into many of her works. Surrounded and inspired by ancient trees, non-anthropocentric data, and biomorphic forms, the forest belongs to her childhood memories, being one of the very first elements capable of influencing the translation of the landscape in her creations. Her practice is guided by this longstanding interest in teasing out the history and memory of biomorphic forms through traditional hand processes, industrial and machine technologies. Playfully inspired by organic patterns and morphology, her site-specific installations are paying testament to the intelligence and transformative capacities of the ecological world.

Claudia Comte was born in Grancy, Switzerland, in 1983. She works with different media, often combining sculptures or installations – her main body of work – with wall paintings, videos, and performances, thus creating environments where works relate to each other with a visual rhythm that is both methodical and playful. Elements such as forests, video games, comic books and sci-fi films have contributed to the creation of a language filled with real and imaginary references. Her work is defined by her fascination with the memory of materials and a keen observation of the relationship between humans and technology.