This Botanical Artist Turns Plants and Tradition Into Sculpture

For Thyme Neelaphanakul, botanical art extends far beyond arranging flowers.

Based in Bangkok and working under the name Blue in Green, Neelaphanakul is a botanical and materials artist whose practice moves between plants, flowers, sculpture and natural materials. Their work draws heavily from growing up in southern Thailand, where plants were not simply decorative objects but part of everyday life, food, religious offerings and local rituals.

That relationship with nature has evolved into a practice where traditional botanical techniques are taken apart and reinterpreted through contemporary materials and forms. Plants can become architectural structures, while materials that aren't botanical at all can be manipulated to behave like them.

This exchange is at the heart of Echoes of Summer, presented as part of Homo Faber 2026: An Island of Light at Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, under the artistic direction of Es Devlin.

Rather than working directly with flowers or leaves, Neelaphanakul created the sculpture from lambskin, folding the material using techniques inspired by bai-sri, a traditional Thai craft in which botanical materials are folded and assembled into elaborate ceremonial forms.

The work is rooted in the artist's memories of summertime in the Thai countryside. Its layered, organic form attempts to capture something less tangible than a landscape: the sensory atmosphere of the season and, in particular, the continuous buzzing of cicadas.

The choice of material creates an unexpected connection between past and present. A technique traditionally associated with plants is preserved, but its material is changed. The result isn't a reproduction of bai-sri, but a contemporary sculpture carrying traces of its language.

Across Neelaphanakul's wider practice, this approach allows botanical art to become something broader: a way of thinking about memory, material, cultural knowledge and our relationship with the natural world.

Rather than simply arranging nature, Neelaphanakul uses it as the foundation for a sculptural language of their own.