Ruth Ju-Shih Li’s spectral Florigelium (2023) is the haunting centrepiece of her solo show Still Life of a Distant Memory, currently on view at Verge Gallery. Described by curator Con Gerakaris as an “otherworldly bloom,” the work fuses together an assortment of native and non-native flora into a wax sculpture, creating an entirely new lifeform that is then perched on an ornate Chinese rosewood stand. It’s the intricacy of Florigelium that beckons me closer, and it’s this need to observe Li’s careful indentations into wax that reveals a significant detail: a network of wicks, almost invisible, scattered throughout the obelisk.