TERZA NATURA

(English)

Some forms seem to have grown, even though they were designed. Between what nature produces and what humans construct lies an intermediate territory, one the humanist Jacopo Bonfadio named terza natura in 1541 while describing the gardens of Lake Garda: a nature shaped by art that remains nature, yet is also artifice. Artifice, from the Latin ars and facere, doesn’t oppose the natural; it extends it.

Tania Zaldivar works within this same logic. Where Bonfadio saw human labor shaping gardens, she uses a Bézier curve, a parametric definition, or a line of code to design systems capable of generating whole families of forms. Rooted in typography, graphic design, product design, and digital art, her work treats each piece as a different expression of a shared language. The result is mathematical precision that never turns rigid, producing surfaces and volumes that keep the irregularity and tension of living things.