CURA NATURAE

In Cura Naturae, the face becomes a meeting place between identity and nature. The figure retains an intensely human presence, yet its boundaries begin to overflow: the hair takes on a vegetal form, green fills the gaze, and organic matter spreads around the face until it becomes uncertain where the body ends and what surrounds it begins.

Against this proliferation, the skin appears contained, smooth, almost artificial. It has the quality of porcelain: beautiful, seemingly untouched and, at the same time, inherently fragile. A fissure appears across it. At first, just a line, but enough to alter the perception of the entire image. The surface is no longer stable; what seemed whole reveals the possibility of breaking.

The crack does not depict a specific catastrophe. It is a sign of vulnerability. Crossing the face, it brings into the body a fracture we tend to regard as external and challenges the distance from which we observe the deterioration of the natural world. The painting brings these two forms of fragility together on a single surface.

The face is central to this shift. Its ability to inspire recognition and empathy transforms a collective, abstract issue into an experience of closeness. The figure does not represent nature, nor is it positioned opposite it. The human and the natural begin to permeate one another’s forms until they belong to the same image.

The gaze, however, remains intact. There is no drama or gesture of victimhood. There is a silent presence that holds the viewer’s attention and returns their gaze. This stillness creates tension between the beauty of the image and the threat contained in the fissure.

Cura Naturae thus proposes a rupture in the boundary between subject and environment. Nature ceases to be landscape, backdrop, or exteriority and enters into the very construction of being. Ecological awareness then emerges not only as a matter of conservation, but also as a question of identity and belonging.

The fissure ultimately reveals that what we believe to be external is also part of our own fragility.