Enmesh, 2026
Clare Celeste Börsch works with colonial-era natural history plates to explore the tension between the preciousness of the natural world and our tendency to exploit it. Where other works in her practuce confront that history, Enmesh imagines a way beyond it. The word “environment” comes from the French environner, “to surround”: it places nature around us, separate and external, something to be managed, conserved or exploited. Drawing on Etienne Benson’s history of the idea, Surroundings, Börsch explores a different word: enmeshment, a relationship in which there is no separation between us and the living world. Beneath the lush canopy, roots reach down and connect gemstones of quartz, amethyst and aquamarine, evoking Indra’s Net, the Buddhist image of an endless net with a jewel at every knot, each one reflecting all the others.
Hand-cut paper collage on papier-mâché base, natural stones (quartz, amethyst, aquamarine), imitation gold leaf, wire.