Monica Rizzolli
Beautiful botanicals made with code
“Creativity is not limited to humans. We do not create things that are not there, we simply combine things.”
Monica Rizzolli doesn’t think nature and computers are all that different. “Nature and humanity are the same for me”, she says. In Rizzolli’s eyes, humans are a part of nature, not separate from it. So art and code are a part of nature too. Her gorgeous botanical patterns embody this kind of ecological thinking. The textures and tones feel intimate and hand-drawn, and the colours are warm and inviting. On the whole, Rizzolli creates long-form artworks where she uses one code for a collection of pieces. Much like a plant species, each collection has a recognisable style, but each piece is total...
Monica Rizzolli doesn’t think nature and computers are all that different. “Nature and humanity are the same for me”, she says. In Rizzolli’s eyes, humans are a part of nature, not separate from it. So art and code are a part of nature too. Her gorgeous botanical patterns embody this kind of ecological thinking. The textures and tones feel intimate and hand-drawn, and the colours are warm and inviting. On the whole, Rizzolli creates long-form artworks where she uses one code for a collection of pieces. Much like a plant species, each collection has a recognisable style, but each piece is totally unique.
Unlike a lot of coding artists, Rizzolli didn’t come to generative art through computer science. Instead, she was drawn to the medium for conceptual reasons. It all started in 2012 when she left Brazil to study in Kassel. “There is a movie by Alain Resnais, Smoking/No Smoking (1993), that has bifurcating storylines that map out different possible scenarios. I wanted to do something similar to the patterns and structures that I observed in my new environment". This led Rizzolli to the software programme Processing and (with the power of her self-taught coding skills) she has become a respected figure in the generative art and NFT space.
Monica Rizzolli (she/her) is a Brazilian artist born in São Carlos in 1981. She is now based in Portugal.
Rizzolli's first NFTs were MP4s and GIFs. But as NFT marketplaces developed, so did the possibilities of her art. “The emergence of Art Blocks felt like something I had been waiting for my entire life”, she says. “Now I could sell the actual piece of code on-chain, rather than an extracted file, which was incredibly exciting”.
Rizzolli sees herself as part of a long lineage of Brazilian generative artists. The Concrete movement in particular had a big impact on her work. This group of influential artists, writers and engineers emerged in Brazil in the 1950s.
