“Fragmentum: An Archaeology of the Remnant.
Memory is a chaotic beast.
Fragmentum is a forensic effort to map and salvage human-plant urban and communal living.”
Donaldson + Irian: a painter’s eye and an anthropological lens
A project born from an interdisciplinary dialogue between a painter’s eye and an anthropological lens. Working alongside researcher and anthropologist Cristina Irian, Roxana Donaldson embarked on a mission to rescue the “absent material culture” of five abandoned houses, turning theoretical research into a visual narrative.
MODULAR | RESEARCH BASED | SITE SPECIFIC | TIME LOOP | status – [ARCHIVED]
Fragmentum is conceived as a modular, research-based installation that reconfigures its spatial logic with each new architectural host within the 2021, two-venue exhibition. Rooted in fieldwork across five abandoned houses, the work evolved in two different displays-each of them an active research variable rather than a neutral container.
It functions as a temporal loop designed to save and document different vegetal iconographies historically produced by humans and used in the urban habitat to mirror the living garden into their homes: the window and wall iconography, the herbarium, and the botanical notebook.
This page functions as a central portal for Roxana Donaldson`s FRAGMENTUM project. Navigate through the sections below to access the full research dossier, visual logs, and critical analysis of this 15-square-meter exploration of duration and time.
OVERVIEW
INSTALLATION | PAINTING | The Parchment Wall: A 15-Square-Meter Exploration
CORE
The core of this research is defined by The Parchment Wall (Zidul Pergament), a monumental 1.5×10 m installation painting that redefines material memory. Exhibited in 2021 at the Ghețărie Gallery, Brâncovan Palaces, Mogoșoaia, and in the White Tower at the Blue Biennale Brasov, the project is a collaborative investigation into the archaeology of memory, and tracks human-plant continuum within uninhabited urban spaces.
METHODOLOGY
As a Memory Analyst + Visual Artist, Donaldson investigates the visual fractals and material layers of human-plant communal existence. Fragmentum serves as a contemporary archive, documenting the human-plant dwelling process of five abandoned houses from the Neamț and Argeș regions. Through a process of macroscopic zooming and material layering, the monumental paper rotulus explores the “wall skin” concept— a border where architectural decay and botanical survival merge into a single narrative tissue.
roxana DONALDSON 