As of the beginning of August, Egyptian photographer and visual artist, Omnia Sabry, takes on the 5-week residency programme of Verzasca Foto Festival in the Swiss Alps.

Omnia plans to develop her research project “Chlorophyllic Memory: To Blossom Images”, which investigates plants’ cognitive behaviour -as active witnesses and collaborators of history- through experimenting with different plant leaves to test their light sensitivity as film surfaces.

Omnia Sabry is interested in exploring language, addressing surfaces as archival bodies, sites of memory, time and the everyday. Focusing on the politics of image-making, green chemistry, and the interactions of light-sensitive surfaces: their ability to sensitise, desensitise, erase memory, give agency to, or take agency from other surfaces, beyond human inputs in the process of documentation or witnessing. Omnia is currently investigating plants’ structures and cognitive behaviour, tests their surfaces as light-sensitive/film material, and considers them as active witnesses and collaborators of histories.