Shortlist, Specimen 07 by Cecilia Manzanares Vargas

"‘Log entry. The specimen has reached its adult stage. Awaiting to be classified.’

In one of his aphorisms, Friedrich Nietzsche states: ‘The real world is much smaller than the imaginary’. I return to this premise constantly, as it expresses the curiosity I have for the textures and shapes of the vegetal world - something that has intrigued me since childhood.

Specimen 07 is a photographic series in which the apparently defined boundaries between vegetal and animal are diluted and mixed together, giving birth to beings that originate in the imagination, and are created from vegetable fragments in my kitchen. These fragments lose their original identity, acquiring a new one when joined. This series shows the stages of development of one of these specimens."