Debora Hirsch's practice focuses on biodiversity preservation and endangered species. In seeking to restore the complexity of the real, her work draws on botanical, ecological, historical, and cultural studies through a methodology grounded in investigation, reinterpretation, and theoretical reflection.

Her recent research develops within the evolving field of Plant Humanities. Working with drawing and painting, AI models, proprietary datasets, algorithmic processes, and animation, she explores the structures of artistic storytelling that can emerge in response to the commodification of plants, our collective obliviousness to vegetal life, and the lack of reverence for the nonhuman world through an inquiry into the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of extinction.

Her sources include herbaria, scientific archives, rare books, digital repositories, textual materials, visual materials from expeditions, while conversations with humanists and botanists often shape the conceptual architecture of my work. In her work, beauty sharpens attention and draws the viewer into the life of plants.

In the Plant series, she generates AI-based compositions using a model fine-tuned with her datasets. Hirsch combines these proliferations into singular visual statements that are recorded on the blockchain, creating a permanent virtual archive of plants we risk losing.

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In the Plantalia video animation, the plants are presented in a state of perpetual transformation, evoking the temporal instability of threatened ecologies. Their forms emerge, expand, fragment, and dissolve, resisting the fixity associated with botanical representation. Generated through a dialogue between archival sources, digital painting, animation, and artificial intelligence, the plants appear as unstable presences shaped by environmental pressure, technological mediation, and the possibility of disappearance. This metamorphosis creates a tension between vitality and loss: each form seems to regenerate while simultaneously approaching extinction. Plantalia reflects on the limits of preservation. By suspending the plants between appearance and erasure, the work invites viewers to experience extinction as an ongoing condition unfolding in real time.

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