Primavera De Filippi

Biography

Primavera De Filippi is a French legal scholar, researcher, and artist whose practice sits at the intersection of law, blockchain technology, and artificial life. A permanent researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a faculty affiliate of Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center, she has spent years studying the legal and political implications of decentralized technologies, publishing widely on blockchain governance, smart contracts, and peer-production communities. Alongside this academic work, De Filippi is known for creating art that gives literal form to these ideas. Her best-known project, Plantoid, is a series of mechanical, plant-like sculptures that function as autonomous, self-owned entities: each Plantoid is designed to collect cryptocurrency donations from admirers who 'pollinate' it, and once it accumulates enough funds, it can commission an artist to build its own 'offspring,' allowing the artwork to reproduce independently of any single owner or creator. Through Plantoid and related works such as Arborithms, Protocolites, and Aminals, De Filippi explores questions of artificial life, autonomy, and ownership, treating blockchain infrastructure as a means of letting artworks sustain and evolve themselves over time. Her sculptures have been exhibited internationally at galleries, art fairs, and institutions, including presentations at Art Basel and dedicated solo exhibitions. By combining legal theory with hands-on artistic experimentation, De Filippi's work invites audiences to reconsider the boundaries between biological and artificial life, and between human and machine-driven creativity and ownership.