CAC Presents | Artist Talk + Workshop: Chemical Garden Project

In 1646, alchemist Johann Rudolf Glauber discovered an “iron tree” grown from the crystals of iron chloride when it contacted with the solution of sodium silicate which is also named water glass. This is the earliest documentation of chemical garden (or silica garden) we’ve found until now.

The chemical reaction is also considered as an inspiration for scientists’ origin-of-life research at hydrothermal vents due to the similarity they shared with each other.

Artist XIE (Leah) Chenliang applies the classic experiment “chemical garden” as a creative technique in her eponymous project, exploring the relationship of the organic and inorganic matter in the ecology system from an in vitro layer. In petri dish, a laboratory ware often used to culture micro organism, inorganic materials grow in exponential speed as a simulation of organic beings. During this process, time becomes to be measuring scale between which life expand infinite potentials in layers from a primitive, flat perspective. Each perti dish is a door of space-time as well as a hotbed of growth.

Xie will present the origin of her artistic project and its process in the event. She will then guide you to create the chemical garden by yourself. Each participant can make two or more pieces in the petri dish or test tube we provide. You are also welcome to carry the materials you’ve collected from elsewhere, such as insect, leaves and gravels. They will have to fit into the size of a petri dish or a test tube.