“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”

-Carl Sagan

As part of a commission from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum for their permanent collection, we produced a unique piece that explores the connection between design and nature.

The piece is titled “C22H20O13,” the chemical formula for carminic acid, better known as the active ingredient in the cochineal pigment.  Centeno was inspired by the origin of materials and the beauty of colors in their purest language: chemistry.

Through an in-depth investigation of the molecular structures that create color, she has metaphorically represented this chemical process in a tapestry composed of different reactions produced by the cochineal pigment, displaying all the possibilities of carminic acid.

The tapestry’s design uses intersections of color to narrate the movement of the molecular structures of carminic acid as it changes its alkalinity and acidity. These variations in its pH allow the cochineal pigment to take on different colorations, such as red, orange, and violet.