Nona Inescu | Daisyworld

About

Brooke Benington is pleased to present Daisyworld, a solo exhibition by Nona Inescu that explores the intricate interplay of pecies, architecture, and materials in a speculative, post-human environment. The exhibition will be at Brooke Benington’s Fitzrovia gallery at 76 Cleveland Street, London W1T 6NB from 6 September - 5 October. The public opening will take place on Thursday 5 September from 6-8 pm.

Daisyworld draws inspiration from the mathematical model developed by James Lovelock and Andrew Watson in 1984, which simulates a hypothetical world orbiting a star with fluctuating radiant energy. The model, designed to support the Gaia hypothesis, features black and white daisies that regulate the planet’s temperature through their respective abilities to absorb and reflect light. Inescu reimagines this concept to examine the hybrid relationships between humans, nature, and non-human species.

In this new series, Inescu’s practice evolves through the juxtaposition of vegetal matter with industrial materials such as steel and brass. The daisy motif recurs throughout the exhibition, symbolizing the delicate balance and self-regulation of ecosystems. The works also reflect Inescu's ongoing exploration of constraint and preservation, themes previously seen in her series ‘Introvert,’ ‘Reliquaries,’ and ‘Preservers.’ Here, she shifts focus from preserving non-human matter to constraining her own body within this hypothetical self-regulating planet.

Visitors are invited into a space where cold metal structures coexist with mutant daisies, hinting at a barely perceptible human presence. The encounter with these works is both seductive and thought-provoking, revealing new ecosystems where the boundaries between the human, vegetal, and built environments blur. Inescu's work encourages us to imagine new interactions and collaborations, producing a speculative landscape that contemplates the future of our interconnected world. 

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Nona Inescu (b. 1991) lives and works between Berlin, Germany, and Bucharest, Romania. She completed her studies in the summer of 2016 at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (Photography and Video Department) after studying at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (2009-2010) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp(2010-2011). Her interdisciplinary artistic practice includes photography, installation, sculptures, and video works. Based on a theoretical and literary perspective, the works focus on the relationship between the human body and the environment and the redefinition of this subject in a post-human key. The mediating properties of the body are rendered in several ways, projecting a translation of the world driven by affect, signalling its position as an interface between self and reality. Concepts of geological time and our intense interrelation with our surroundings compose an aesthetic of a primal contemporary togetherness in an organic and biological techno-sphere. Recent exhibitions have taken place at: Rodeo Gallery (London), Goethe Institut (Bucharest), Le CAP Saint-Fons (Lyon); Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin); MAMAC (Nice); Radius (Delft); SpazioA (Pistoia); Centre Clark (Montreal); Art Encounters Biennale (Timișoara); Steirischer Herbst (Graz); Peles Empire(Berlin); basis (Frankfurt), Tallinn Art Hall (Estonia), Museo della Montagna (Torino), among others.