PRESS RELEASE
Clare Celeste Börsch’s new works mourn the fading blue of Brazil’s Morpho butterfly and confront the colonial roots of natural history
Berlin, 21 October 2026. German-American artist Clare Celeste Börsch presents three new works: Gilded, Swarm and Enmesh, all 2026. Made from hand-cut natural history plates published between 1835 and 1902, the works hold a duality: the beauty of the living world, and the colonial extraction that both recorded and exploited it. Börsch’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History and Homo Faber in Venice and commissioned by Cartier. She is the 2027 Martin Shallenberger Artist-in-Residence at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens.
The inspiration behind these works was found in a Copenhagen glasshouse, where the smell of the tropics carried Börsch back to Brazil, where she grew up, and raised a question: how much violence did it take to capture the tropics under glass in Europe?
“I love glasshouses and natural history plates. I seek them out wherever I travel. And yet they are implicated in the destruction of one of my childhood homes. I don’t want to resolve that tension. I want to explore it.” - Clare Celeste Börsch
Gilded, 2026
A vintage birdcage stands in for the colonial glasshouse and for the roots of Western natural history in conquest and extraction. Around it, blue Morpho butterflies and leaves climb and entwine. The Morpho is native to Brazil, and research now shows that deforestation and the loss of biodiversity are dulling its famous blue.
Gilded in places, the work evokes how living abundance was captured, contained and transformed into wealth. It asks us to question our extractive relationship to nature, and the violence it took to bring the ecosystems of the Global South under glass in Europe.
Hand-cut paper, florist's wire, imitation gold leaf, vintage birdcage on wooden stand
205 x 90 x 50 cm
Swarm, 2026
A swarm of leaves and blue Morpho butterflies spirals upward, evoking nature’s primordial power, which cannot be caught, contained or fully categorised.
Laced with gold, the swarm recalls how the abundance of the colonised world was turned into wealth and carried home to Europe, where it still gilds churches and palaces. At its edges, butterflies break away on golden wire, slipping free of the order imposed on them.
Hand-cut paper collage, papier-mâché, golden wire, imitation gold leaf
80 x 70 x 35 cm
Enmesh, 2026
Where Gilded and Swarm confront the history of extraction, Enmesh imagines a way beyond it. The word "environment" comes from the Old French environner, "to surround": it places nature around us, separate and external, something to be managed, conserved or taken. Drawing on Etienne Benson's history of the idea, Surroundings, Börsch proposes a different word: enmeshment, a relationship in which there is no separation between us and the living world. The beveled gemstones evoke Indra’s Net, an image from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology of an endless net with a jewel at every knot, each reflecting all the others.
Hand-cut paper collage on papier-mâché base, natural stones (quartz, amethyst, aquamarine), imitation gold leaf, wire
55 x 60 x 30 cm
The archive behind the works
The butterflies and leaves are printed from natural history plates sourced from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, then cut and assembled by hand. The butterflies come from Hippolyte Lucas's Histoire naturelle des lépidoptères exotiques (Paris: Pauquet, 1835–36) and Henley Grose-Smith and William F. Kirby's Rhopalocera Exotica (London: Gurney & Jackson, 1887–1902).
These images carry a double history. They are among the most vivid records we have of a world that is disappearing, and they were made in the service of the colonial collecting, classification and extraction that helped destroy it. Börsch does not resolve this contradiction; she holds it. Her practice is grounded in viriditas: the belief that ecological grief and imagination can become a call for conservation. We cannot mourn what we have not first been made to love.
Contact
press@clareceleste.com
+49 176 315 63634
https://www.clareceleste.com/
Download the high-resolution images and social media clips
Interviews and studio visits in Berlin are available on request.
END OF PRESS RELEASE
NOTES TO EDITORS
Clare Celeste Börsch: Artist Biography
Clare Celeste Börsch (b. 1982, Thailand) is a German-American artist based in Berlin. Her installations and artworks have been exhibited at Homo Faber in Venice and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and commissioned by Cartier during Art Basel Miami. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, FAZ, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Oprah Magazine. She is the 2027 Martin Shallenberger Artist-in-Residence at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens in Nashville.
Börsch celebrates biodiversity in a time of ecological crisis, holding the tension between exaltation and mourning. She works with 19th-century natural history plates, sourced from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, to bring endangered and extinct species back into the light. These images carry a double history: they record the beauty of the living world, yet they were made in the service of colonial expeditions. Raised in Brazil and now based in Europe, close to the archives where so much of the world's natural history was gathered, Börsch works within this duality. She uses the colonial record to question how we value, relate to and exploit the natural world. Cutting the images apart by hand and rebuilding them is her way of looking again, and of giving them new meaning. Her practice is grounded in viriditas, the transformation of ecological grief and imagination into a call for conservation.
Börsch grew up across Brazil, the United States, Italy, Honduras and Argentina. Her father was a professor of Latin American History at Indiana University and later a U.S. diplomat, and her mother was a textile artist. Her earliest memories are of Brazil's lush, humming ecosystems: the ocean, the rivers, the rainforest and the electric blue of Morpho butterflies. Research now shows that this blue is fading as forests are cleared and biodiversity dwindles. Her recent work turns to the Morpho as a symbol of beauty, resilience and loss.
She holds a BA in cultural anthropology, focused on Latin America through a postcolonial lens, and a Master's in environmental policy from UCLA. She worked in U.S. federal government and public arts administration before becoming an artist. This background shapes a practice that is as much about research and inquiry as about craft.
Börsch is the founder and Creative Director of Clare Celeste Studio. Through her Berlin-based team of assistants and production partners, she creates site-specific environments for museums, cultural institutions, public spaces and luxury houses, bringing the richness of the natural world into unexpected settings.