The texture, the translucency and the vast chromatic range of wax make it the ideal medium to immortalize the impermanent. From the eighteenth century onwards, these qualities are made available to the medical and scientific community through close collaboration between artists and researchers. Wax modelling then becomes the perfect medium to represent anatomical, zoological, mycological and botanical models. 

 

 

The first ceroplastic productions of Bologna and Florence are the perfect examples of this association, gathering purely scientific information and an undeniable aesthetic dimension. Since then, this form of "syncretism", knowledge and aesthetics, has dominated wax production from the eighteenth century until its disappearance during the twentieth century.

 

Nathalie Latour’s artistic work is a tribute to these now extinct processes. By using exclusively eighteenth century mediums and techniques, her approach is based on the adaptation of an old know-how to a contemporary vision of these ephemeral bodies. This allows Nathalie Latour to revise the ancient traditional codes to evolve towards a form of contemporary poetry. The models composed of organic, precious and natural materials are a link between the past and the present, between the artistic and the scientific.