Hicham BERRADA merges scientific inquiry with a poetic sensitivity to transformation. By harnessing chemical reactions and physical phenomena—precipitation, magnetism, temperature shifts—he creates conditions in glass vessels or terrariums that let natural processes unfold autonomously. Rather than replicating nature, he enables it to perform, generating pieces that evolve in real time and invite reflection on matter, duration, and the aesthetics of change.
In his video Présage (2007), metals dissolve, oxidize, and crystallize within an aquarium, interacting with corrosive solutions. What emerges is a slow dance of metamorphosis—filaments, halos, mineral blooms—as if new forms of life were surfacing spontaneously in a luminous, laboratory-like reef. Berrada doesn’t represent nature; he engages it as a co-creator. Through meticulously guided reactions, he lets matter transform, decay, and reorganize. The video’s meditative choreography immerses us in a scale-less dimension—where time stretches, structures surface, and change becomes a hypnotic force.
