The exhibition by Donata Lazzarini, titled The Day Woodii Woke Up Female, will open on Friday, May 8, 2026 at 5:00 pm at the Orto Botanico dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo.

The exhibition is part of the project Celibi. Storia di una migrazione botanica, supported by the public call PAC2025 – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Ministry of Culture and commissioned by Unipa Heritage Sistema Museale.

Curated by Maria Rosa Sossai, the project aims to make visible the consequences of biodiversity depletion through the languages of art, scientific research, and education. It focuses on the extinction of the female specimen of a particular cycad species: Encephalartos woodii.

This cycad was discovered in 1895 in the Ngoye Forest in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, by the English botanist John Medley Wood, from whom the plant takes its scientific name. Since only male specimens were found, the removal of these individuals led to the species’ extinction in the wild in 1916, threatening its survival and making it one of the rarest plants in the world. These same plants, removed from their natural habitat, were placed in various botanical gardens and used to produce hybrids, one of which—Encephalartos woodii × natalensis—is housed at the Palermo Botanical Garden and represents the closest species to the original South African plant. Meanwhile, some specimens kept in other botanical gardens have been stolen and sold to collectors on the illegal market.

Starting from this case study, the project develops as a narrative and visual device that interweaves art, science, and philosophy, offering a critical reflection on the transformations of biodiversity and on the possibilities, both real and imagined, of rewriting its destiny.