It always influence your artistic vision?
NH: Yes, it is something that is always present. It is inseparable.
Another component of your work is color. It is important in terms of your artistic process?
NH: Yes, the color is always a relationship with the referent with which I am working. Are the botanical species, has to do with the colors of the flowers, leaves. Typically, the color is not seen from the naturalistic point of view. It has to do with other materials within the workshop with which I am working and are creating a unity between the colors.
There is an installation that is a book. The idea comes through the geographical stratification of an islet of Porto Santo.
NH: This is related to the work I have been carrying around the specie of dragon trees. This last work was developed from the description of the process of Gaspar Fructuoso. I also make a description of the dragon tree of the island of Porto Santo that goes back to the Portuguese colonization. He describes the islet of dragon trees, which today is called the upper islet, which is next to the port. Within this work I paid a visit to that territory which is part of the natural park of Madeira and then when I was working in the studio this experience I began to develop a small topographic book of the islet. As I built this model with several level curves always on paper come the idea to do the book, it's like a negative of the islet. The colors are evocative of the ancient dragon trees.
Are you developing a new art project related to the island, or nature?
NH: Yes, the work always has a relationship with the natural world. Has been developed around narratives of botanical species. I'm developing some work with the dragon tree; others are related to my residency in New York with the Gulbenkian scholarship. Again there is an island that is Manhattan, how will I materialize this work I do not know yet.
You think there's a dichotomy in your work, on one
hand, it is very artistic, but there is always a very scientific component in your work.
NH: There is some data that are brought in from other disciplines, but I do not agree that it is a scientific. From the point of view that science produces, has nothing to do with the work I do. My work is artistic. While science, has no consistency. I use botanical data, is not science. Just use the referent, I could just use color. In contemporary art there are many things that come from other areas, or different ways of making art.
So you use that data and reinterpret?
NH: Yes, I reinterpret them.
How then would you define your small work?
NH: As art.
Just that?
NH: And that's enough! (Laughs).
