body

Robert Forman

​The interface between my interior self and the outside world is the uniting concept behind my recent work. Today’s news reminds me of my yarn painting "Infestation." 90% of the DNA in our bodies is not human. This got me thinking of all the infestations I’ve experienced - fleas, chiggers, bedbugs, rodents etc. - and of all the infestations we as humans are made of.
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"Infestation" 45" x 18" Yarn painting. Image courtesy of the artist.

​Forman began making yarn paintings in 1969 while still in high school. He thought he had invented the technique. In college at The Cooper Union Forman kept his yarn painting to himself. His professors preferred his drawings to his paintings. Jack Whitten, Forman’s painting professor, asked his class what they did during vacation. Forman volunteered that he was working on a project that wasn't exactly painting. After visiting his studio Whitten told Forman to stick to yarn and that he would consider them paintings.  Seeing a yarn painting at a Greenwich Village flea market Forman discovered that yarn painting was a traditional art form among the Wixarika (Huichol) people of Mexico.  A Fulbright Fellowship enabled Forman to travel to Mexico and meet fellow yarn painters. Forman has maintained his relationship with fellow yarn painters both by returning to Mexico regularly and by hosting Wixarika artists in his home. 

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WhiteFeather Hunter

"Mooncalf" (1/3 triptych) Digital photograph on archival photo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

​The Anthropocene is rife with calamitous warnings of climate science, hearkened by a roster of biotechnology start-up companies who propose to invent lab-grown meat as an alternative to the ecologically disastrous livestock industry. Solutionist hype is used to promote ‘sustainable,’, ‘eco-friendly,’ ‘cruelty-free,’ ‘clean’ meat, masking a continued reliance on animal agriculture: mammalian tissue is still grown in vitro using fetal calf serum, a blood-derived nutrient. The question remains: Is it possible to grow meat without relying on nonhuman animals?
 
Scientific protocols do exist for growing mammalian tissue with human venous serum and recent research has established the potential of menstrual fluid for skin wound repair, as well as analyzed its unique growth factors compared to venous blood. However, there is a dearth of scientific information about wider applications of menstrual blood in biotechnological contexts. There are no publications that examine the potential of menstrual blood for mammalian tissue culture.
 
The project I present, "Mooncalf," is a series of wet lab experiments that determine the viability of my own menstrual serum as a substitute for fetal calf serum used to culture mammalian tissue. My experiments present a direct provocation that problematizes the cellular agriculture industry as it pertains to the production of ‘clean meat,’ instead working towards a proof-of-concept ‘unclean’ meat prototype. This project contaminates ideas used as marketing in the clean meat industry, while also pointing to the taboo nature of menstrual fluid that is viewed as a contaminant in sterile lab/research spaces, as well as broader body-fearing cultural contexts.
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"Mooncalf" (2/3 triptych) Digital photograph on archival photo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

"Mooncalf" (3/3 triptych) Digital photograph on archival photo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

WhiteFeather Hunter is an internationally recognized Canadian artist and scholar. She is currently a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, Australian Government International RTP Scholar and Postgraduate Scholar at the University of Western Australia, situated between the School of Human Sciences (SymbioticA) and the UWA School of Design. WhiteFeather's practice investigates vital materiality through biotechnological protocols, witch/craft, performance and new media. She publishes and presents work internationally, recently at Ars Electronica (AT), New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies (NZ), University of the Arts Helsinki (FI) and in numerous North American cities. ​

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Laura Murray

“Ground Glass” 15" x 17.5" Oil on primed paper. Image courtesy of the artist. This work is the most recent addition to this series, named after a condition that causes abnormalities in the lungs which result in hazy, opaque X-rays. Ground-glass patterns in the lungs are seen more and more often these days, being symptomatic of Covid-19 infection.

I am a multimedia artist interested in how the fields of art, science, and urbanism are all interconnected.  Much of the imagery I employ in my work is scientific. I collect X-rays of broken bones and diseased tissue from friends and family, using these as a source reference for oil paintings. I find that the visual format of an X-ray translates beautifully through oil paint. Once painted, the X-rays have a translucent, layered depth that evokes thoughts of deep sea creatures. I've felt a sense of calm while painting anatomical aspects of our physical condition that go beyond surface level, literally underneath the skin. I believe our anatomical fragility is the common-denominator that connects us as a species. This fragility penetrates culturally-constructed dividers; in essence, our ability to break is what unites us. ​
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"Push" 12.25" x 18". Oil on primed paper. Image courtesy of the artist. This x-ray painting features a pubic bone damaged by a phenomenon called diastasis symphysis pubis : during childbirth, if the mother is having trouble pushing the baby out, her body triggers the breakdown of cartilage connecting her pubic bone, breaking it in half so the baby can exit safely. The female body literally self-destructs in order to facilitate birth.

"Fillings" 15" x 20". Oil on primed paper. Image courtesy of the artist. This particular x-ray painting depicts a mouth with wisdom teeth and moth-like fillings. Sometimes when referencing an x-ray that depicts metal pins or plates, I'll focus on the strange shape of the foreign objects until they manifest as something even more alien in the finished painting.

Laura Murray was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK.  She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. She has completed two residencies: the Oklahoma Summer Art Institute Residency in Oklahoma City, and the Snug Harbor Artist Residency Program in Staten Island. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Postmasters Gallery (New York, NY), Arc Gallery (San Francisco, CA), the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKC, OK), and Galerist (Istanbul).  She has been featured in New York Magazine, Dazed Magazine, The Nation, and Vice’s The Creators Project.

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Eva Davidova

Playing with a paradox, I imagine us as being built by our future descendants (humans or cyborg), and pose a question: If we are the games our children will program one day, can we influence the code they are writing? Can we pull the genes of another reality into this one? Could we seed enough doubt, as to "contaminate" this so-called real reality with something else?

Since the start of my project "Global Mode" in 2015, I have increasingly worked with the mixture of human bodies with those of animals, and with the deceptive, nebulous body of “data”. The series "Global Mode" transposes the mythological figures of Narcissus, Cassandra, Prometheus or Saturn to the current technological and political moment to create absurd, alternative realities. The resulting virtual spaces become a playground where we can find agency in uncertainty and use the body experience to subconsciously shape new relationships to global events and to Others.

My practice involves interactive and immersive VR/AR installations, drawing, film, 3D sculpture and photo-based animations. I reject what we give for granted, and explore possibilities for action through uncertainty and play. The issues in my work - behavior, ecological disaster and manipulation of information - emerge as paradoxes rather than statements, in an almost fairy-tale fashion.
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Global Mode > Playing with Flesh colored Geese. 2016 from Eva Davidova on Vimeo.

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​Eva Davidova is a Spanish/ Bulgarian interdisciplinary artist with focus on new media(s), information, and their socio-political implications. Disrupting and challenging a singular narrative, she combines influences from ancient mythology with the current technological moment and the impending ecological catastrophe. Davidova has exhibited at the Bronx Museum, the Everson Museum, the Albright Knox Museum, MACBA Barcelona, CAAC Sevilla, Instituto Cervantes and La Regenta among others. Recent exhibitions include "The Sound of One Computer Thinking" at the IMPAKT Festival (Netherlands), "Intentions: Who Owns Our Emotions" at EdgeCut series at NEW INC and "Global Mode > Narcissus and Drowning Animals" at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. She was a fellow of the first Technology Immersion Program for Artists (TIP) by Harvestworks, and is currently a member of NEW INC, the New Museum’s Incubator program. Her upcoming participatory online performance Global Mode > was commissioned by ISSUE Project Room.

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Rian Hotton

​To spread and spoil are two human effects of survival borne from our preprogramed evolutionary fears. Throughout history our means of survival have changed but the effects stay the same and consistently scale up. Contamination of mind, body, and environments manifests itself in various ways and has become integrated into our lives and made to seem normal, beyond the control of ourselves. My work seeks to investigate through visual relationships the means to intervene into the conceptions/perceptions of our normality. Moreover, our way of thinking. To plant a seed in the subconscious that propagates new ideas and conversation that will help slowly consolidate our contamination.  As part of this process I investigate problems that have arisen in science, questions that we do not know the answers to or how the question can be changed. Through research as a basis, imagination, the subconscious, and attempting to think beyond our perception, what I create are paintings that reflect these inner strange thoughts, they invoke inquiry and conversation. The conversation may be more important than the piece - it is dialogue. There may come a time where a painting produces, from somewhere, a seed of an answer. Much of my daily thought is based upon my perception of my functioning reality but my inner thoughts when painting are vastly different, they search everywhere, and I need an outlet for them. The questions posed give meaning and purpose to my work whilst my research slowly builds my knowledge of the many disciplines that would be involved in creating a tangible shift in thinking.
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"The Slow Consolidation" Acrylic on Hahnemuhle Bambbo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

Rian Hotton is a full-time artist, born in Jersey, now based in London. Producing works in varying mediums that are inspired by the built and natural environment, nostalgia, and more recently bridging the gap between art and science. Rian believes that our experience and memories along with our imaginations should be the guiding force to answer the questions of the future.  As an artist he has a duty to his art and to himself and that in collaboration with other fields the resulting work should serve a higher purpose. 

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John Paul Kesling

Living is the ultimate catalyst for contamination. The minute we're born, we start our journey from purity to contamination. Our upbringing, environment, friends, parents, and the times we live in all slide into our bodies and minds through a semi-permeable filtering system of our own making. For this work, nostalgia and memory take the lead. Memory is unreliable and everybody is subject to forgetting, rearranging, and bending memory into what they need it to be at different times. These works attempt to access those memories that are fading, changing, and being contaminated, and thus, push them back into the light again.
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"Dirt-ballers" 17" x 17" Acrylic on paper and birch panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

John Paul Kesling was born and raised on the banks of the Ohio River,  spending much of his time outdoors. He attended Morehead State University in  Morehead, KY for his BFA in Arts and spent a semester in Europe studying art  history. Kesling went on to receive his MFA in Painting from The Savannah  College of Art and Design in 2010. He spent the next six years in Brooklyn, NY, immersed in the NYC art scene. In March of 2016, he attended a month-long  residency at The Vermont Studio Center. While there, he realized how integral  time, space, and nature were to his studio practice and in July, 2016 he  relocated to Madison, TN. He has recently had solo shows at The Red Arrow  Gallery (Nashville, TN), Oz Arts (Nashville,TN) and Tim Faulkner Gallery  (Louisville, KY). He is represented by The Red Arrow Gallery. He now owns a dog. 

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Ibuki Kuramochi

"Overlap" 24" x 36". Digital print. Image courtesy of the artist.

Since this pandemic situation, our lives are threatened by the act of eradication every day. We cannot have communication with people in person anymore without observing social distancing. We fear that everything organic or inorganic is potentially contaminated. I worry that even my body is contaminated ...my hair and feet, even my face. I am becoming more and more oblivious to my physical body. Under this circumstance, all human relationships are now concentrated in the virtual world through the Internet. People’s thoughts, remarks and lives are appear in our vision which formed into photographs, movies, letters, and become a huge timeline. My work evokes and awakens the oblivion of the physical body in the current virtual world.
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"Subconscious" 24" x 36". Digital print. Image courtesy of the artist.

"The Border" 24" x 36". Digital print. Image courtesy of the artist.

Born in Japan, multimedia Artist Ibuki Kurmochi specializes in artworks for exhibition (paintings, movies, and digital works), and also specializes in live performances combining her live painting with her Japanese Butoh dance. From 2012, Ibuki started exhibiting works in major cities in Japan, the U.S.,Taiwan, France, Italy, and Australia. She studied Butoh dance at the world renown Kazuo Ohno Butoh Dance Studio in Yokohama in 2016. Through her work, she pursues the physicality of Butoh’s poetic choreography and the pursuit of the human body in anatomy. She visualizes her performance and body movements as two-dimensional works and video works. Ibuki explores concepts of the body, thought and physical resonance, metamorphosis and fetishism. In 2019, Ibuki received a USA O-1 artist visa. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

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