Anna Fine Foer

Anna Fine Foer (Maryland, USA)

Phylogenic Entanglement, 2022

collage, watercolor

30 x 22 inches

With more accurate observational techniques available to scientists, more discoveries demonstrate how biological and physical states of being are less delineated and more entangled than previously hypothesized. For example, physicists tell us that particles are entangled, and the hemispheres of the human brain are interconnected by neurons “firing.” As this collage illustrates, the diagram and metaphor of tree branches representing species are inaccurate. The misleading cladogram (diagrams that depict the relationships between different groups of taxa called “clades”) envisioned by Darwin did not comprehend microbial entities that enter plant and animal genomes via horizontal gene transfer and account for part of all biological and botanical inheritance. Tangled branches must re-converge.