Maria Fernanda Cardoso

Maria Fernanda Cardoso is an international artist in the true sense of the word, being Colombian-born, trained in the United States and residing in Australia with her family. Inspired by nature at an early age, she was drawn to the connection between art and science through her reading of the stories of Leonardo da Vinci.

In Naked Flora, Cardoso’s exploration of the reproductive morphology of flowering plants treats sex and reproduction not as taboo topics but purely as the facts of the science of nature. Her use of deep-focus photography to capture parts of flowers frozen in time continues the tradition of natural history through museology and artificialia, the most famous examples being the Harvard glass flowers, or, closer to home, the papier mâché models of fruits and fungi in the Museum of Economic Botany (Adelaide).

TONY KANELLOS