The Living Herbarium

Explore The Living Herbarium, a collection of mixed-media botanical reliefs by Alvi Siren incorporating preserved leaves, stems, flowers, and fruits. Embedded into tactile plaques and transformed through colour and metallic pigment, these natural specimens become lasting records of growth, change, and seasonal memory.

The collection includes Gilded Meadow, Elderflower Light, Wild Rose Remnants, and Wild Rose in Bloom. Each composition retains the intricate details of its original plant material – from serrated edges and delicate networks of veins to branching flower heads, rosehips, and fading petals. Applied greens, yellows, pinks, earthy tones, and metallic gold enhance these natural textures without concealing their fragile forms.

Viewed together, the works follow plants through different stages of their lives: flowering, maturing, fading, and forming fruit. The Living Herbarium transforms ephemeral botanical material into a tactile record of nature, preserving not only the appearance of the plants but something of their physical presence, held in colour and relief.

Gilded Meadow, painting by Ukrainian artist Alvi Siren

Gilded Meadow

In Gilded Meadow, Alvi Siren preserves the physical presence of meadow plants within a small circular hanging plaque. Real botanical forms appear to have been pressed into or embedded upon the pale surface, transforming leaves, stems, and clustered flowers into a tactile composition poised between painting and low-relief sculpture.

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Elderflower Light, painting by Ukrainian artist Alvi Siren

Elderflower Light

In Elderflower Light, Alvi Siren preserves the delicate architecture of flowering plants within a circular relief. Real leaves, stems, and clustered flower heads appear embedded into the pale surface, transforming natural specimens into a tactile composition between botanical assemblage, painting, and low-relief sculpture.

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Wild Rose Remnants, painting by Ukrainian artist Alvi Siren

Wild Rose Remnants

In Wild Rose Remnants, Alvi Siren preserves a wild rose at a moment of transition. Real botanical material appears embedded into the circular plaque, bringing together serrated leaves, slender stems, fading flower heads, and developing rosehips within a delicate, tactile composition.

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Wild Rose in Bloom, painting by Ukrainian artist Alvi Siren

Wild Rose in Bloom

In Wild Rose in Bloom, Alvi Siren preserves the physical form of a flowering wild rose within a tactile rectangular plaque. Real botanical specimens appear embedded across the pale surface, bringing together branching stems, serrated leaves, pink petals, flower buds, and developing rosehips.

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