Donata Lazzarini, with the project Celibi. A History of a Botanical Migration, has won the PAC2025 – Plan for Contemporary Art, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The program aims to enrich the Italian public heritage through the acquisition, production, and promotion of contemporary artworks.

The work, which thanks to UniPa will be realized in the Botanical Garden of the University of Palermo—a long-standing reference point for scientific dissemination and environmental reflection—carries the evocative title The Day Woodii Awoke Female. It is part of the project Celibi. A History of a Botanical Migration, curated by Maria Rosa Sossai, with the scientific consultancy of Michelangelo Gruttadauria, President of the University Museum System, Rosario Schicchi, Director of the Botanical Garden, Giuseppina Pisciotta Tosini, Professor of Agricultural Law, and Manlio Speciale, Curator of the Botanical Garden.

The project focuses on the extinction of rare botanical species, taking inspiration from the story of Encephalartos woodii, a cycad for which no female specimen has ever been found. While extinct in the wild, several male specimens are preserved in botanical gardens around the world. When Donata Lazzarini discovered that “Celibi” is also the name used in California to identify the three extremely rare male specimens of Encephalartos woodii housed at Lotusland Botanical Garden, she connected the infertility of the solitary male Woodii to the notion of celibacy in Duchampian thought. She then envisioned the day of their awakening as female beings, evoking the metamorphosis of Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s novel.

At the Palermo Botanical Garden, the hybrid Encephalartos woodii × natalensis is cultivated, genetically the closest living plant to the original E. woodii. The project will create possible and imaginary forms of the female strobilus (the primitive inflorescence that determines the sex of the plant). Woodii is the popular name by which the plant is known and with which it has migrated across different parts of the world.

The project includes an exhibition at the Palermo Botanical Garden in May 2026, featuring ten sculptures in ceramic and white porcelain representing possible and imaginary female forms of E. woodii. These works will draw on ancient botanical illustrations, reinterpreted through plastic and digital technologies. On the façade of the Cactaceae Greenhouse, window films inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome will be applied, showing the results of research carried out during residencies in Sicily and in London at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where a specimen of E. woodii is preserved. A final poster distributed to the public will address the theme of extinction and de-extinction of plants, referencing practices and technologies aimed at bringing extinct species back to life. The project will be supported by a public dissemination campaign, educational workshops, and an international conference on extinction and de-extinction, with the participation of international experts from various fields engaged in biodiversity from ethical, scientific, legal, and artistic perspectives.

The exhibition by Donata Lazzarini, titled The Day Woodii Awoke Female, at the Palermo Botanical Garden will conclude in May 2026 the first part of the project, which will be completed with a Public Program curated by Maria Rosa Sossai.