From June 6th to September 8th, the Orto Botanico Museum in Rome hosts the exhibition by Silvia Cini Avant que nature meure, a project among the winners of the Italian Council (11th edition, 2022), the international promotion program for Italian contemporary art of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. The project - presented by the Orto Botanico Museum, Polo Museale Sapienza, Sapienza University of Rome in partnership with ELTE University Botanical Garden Budapest - has allowed the creation of a work destined for the Central Institute for Graphics.

Avant que nature meure arises from the encounter between two artists, in an affinity that transcends a distance of over a century: Silvia Cini - who since the 1990s through participatory art practices has focused her research on the landscape as a social metaphor - and Enrico Coleman, considered one of the most significant landscape painters in late 19th century Rome.

Between 1893 and 1910, Coleman painted a series of watercolors of wild orchids, indicating for each the name and location of discovery: from this pre-literary mapping of the biodiversity of the Urbe, Silvia Cini's research started - begun in 2015 - on the current blooms that have survived in the urban context, with the aim - through citizen awareness for conservation and entities for changing mowing schedules - to protect the still existing species. Coleman's tables, along with his herbarium, are preserved in Rome at the Central Institute for Graphics, where the works of the two artists will come together.