Sampling Greens
Irene Kopelman
(2012)
Within the inhospitable interior of Borneo lies Mount Kinabalu, its highest point with the greatest biodiversity. The flora and fauna of Kinabalu remain a mystery: thousands of varieties are found here that can be found nowhere else on earth. There are either young – recent evolutionary offshoots, adapted to the great altitude – or old: the remains of ancient ecosystems. A team of scientists from Malaysia and the Netherlands (NCB Naturalis) undertook an expedition to examine the origin of these varieties.
Irene Kopelman accompanied the expedition with her own field work: collecting colours. Her aim was to make an inventory of the immeasurable varieties of shades of green. She collected green leaves from every location, after which she tried to replicate the exact shade of green back at the camp. A single line on paper represents a leaf with a single green colour; several lines represent a leaf with a more complex composition. In the end, Kopelman collected as many as 180 'shades of green' in two weeks' time, resulting in colour studies that provide a different map of the territory.