Sergio Rojas Chaves
∗1992, San Cristobal, Venezuela
Sergio Rojas Chaves has a background in architecture and community development. His sculptures, installations, video works, photography and performances activate new relationships and tell new stories and histories about animals and plants while also triggering affective approaches to biology. Through this exploration of the role of non-human organisms in human daily life, he attempts to cast new light on our human condition, questioning our supposed exceptionality and revealing our interconnected relationships with the natural world. This interest in the way in which we interact with plants and animals has led him to observe birdwatching communities or to study people’s relationships to their house plants with a sort of ethnographic approach that allows him to dig deeper into these relationships.Promise of a Living Fossil investigates the historical presence of Cycad plants in the Dolomites. Cycas revoluta is a modern-day relative of the Dolomites’ prehistoric flora. Resembling a small palm tree, and highly sought-after as an ornament, the plant is considered a “living fossil” due to its ancestry. Sergio Rojas Chaves works across the urban and the domestic spheres, investigating the long-lasting relationship between history and botany that manifests itself through the plant. In the public space of Ortisei, the artist spreads large colourful flags with portraits of the Cycas revoluta while he also offers the plants’ seeds to passersby, who are given the chance to establish an alliance with a new plant.
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