Burnt Map (kaio) 4, 2022

Laser-engraved Wood, Acrylic

20 x 25 x 3 cm

Unique

These works build on material collected from wildfire-damaged forests in the Peloponnese and Cyprus. Charred pieces of bark, burnt wood, and forest debris were digitized through video, photography, and 3D scanning, forming the foundation for a series of laser-engraved wooden panels.

The process transforms organic material into encoded surface language — lines, scorched marks, and engravings that trace both destruction and memory. In a sense, the bark is “re-burned,” not through fire, but through precision-based laser technology that re-inscribes the trauma into fresh material. The contrast between the rawness of the burned forms and the controlled accuracy of the laser evokes the uneasy meeting point between natural catastrophe and human technological framing.

As the imagery hovers between the organic and the symbolic, the works explore what it means to process ecological disaster through machine logic. The engraved patterns resemble satellite topographies, waveforms, and language fragments — as if the forest’s history had been translated into code. Yet at the core remains a tactile record of place: a quiet but charged surface that speaks of environmental fragility, mediated perception, and the impulse to preserve.

These pieces extend ongoing explorations of the human/machine relationship, here drawing out the tension between loss and documentation, between environmental collapse and the systems we use to understand it.