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Ranran Fan

"Safebed" Image courtesy of the artist.

My work is about creating images and devices as manifestos. It is an alternative way to make statements about the issues that are difficult to talk about and even unspeakable in certain cultural and social contexts. Based on my own experiences, I use my works to state facts, figure out solutions, reach out and potentially provide supports to anyone who shares the similar experiences.

I make devices and images that have self-sustaining logic. Each of them is a complete alternative system that challenges the assumptions of the current systems – the structure, principles, and the rules. They contain commonly encountered materials, including paper and cardboard. They tweak the general functionality of mundane objects, such as bed and cameras. They generate new functions for both materials and objects. But eventually, these functions are impractical and futile, indicating that these solutions are illusional. Each illusion of the solution further emphasizes a specific aspect of the issues, and questions if these issues have been perceived properly.
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"Facetime" Image courtesy of the artist.

Ranran Fan (b. China) is an artist currently based in the U.S., working primarily in photography, installation, and performance. Ranran earned a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BS in Biology in Hong Kong, and is pursuing a MFA at the University of New Mexico Studio Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally including Academy Art Museum, Santa Fe Art Institute, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (China), and Incheon Marine Asia Photography and Video Festival (Korea). Ranran has been nominated as a SITE Scholar at SITE Santa Fe (2019). She received several awards including Student Award for Innovations in Imaging at Society for Photographic Education (U.S., 2019), and the Shiseido Photographer Prize at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (China, 2018).

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Magdalena Dukiewicz

My multi-disciplinary practice is process-based and a combination of material experimentation and site-specific factors. I deconstruct and recontextualize organic materials such as hydrolyzed collagen, blood, bones, and seaweed in order to discuss sociopolitical issues or physical and biological phenomena.

“This is my body, this is my blood” is an ongoing series that began in 2018. Handmade sculptures replicate the shapes of domestic objects like lamps, plates, and cups. In this case, I recycled a lamp frame and added a shade made from a bio textile that is composed of hydrolyzed collagen and glycerin. The red coloring of the material comes from my own blood which I extracted myself, literally constructing the object with traces of my DNA.
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Born in 1982 in Warsaw, Poland, Magdalena Dukiewicz is a visual artist based in Brooklyn. Her works revolve around the binomial of art - nature, new technologies, and interactive art. The materials are chosen for their potential for transformation and their intrinsic properties. Dukiewicz's two solo exhibitions were presented in Brooklyn in 2020 "Elements of Perturbation" at The Border Project Space and "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" at Stand4 Gallery. Her installation was selected for the inaugural show at BioBAT Art Space in New York. She participated in several group exhibitions in the U.S., Spain, Mexico, and Poland. Dukiewicz is a recipient of the Nessa Cohen Grant for Sculpture and a grant from the Polish Minister of Culture and Heritage. She was a resident at the studio of Carlos Amorales in Mexico City in 2017 and at the Bio Art Residency at SVA NYC in 2013 and 2018.

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Elaine Whittaker

"Treading Insidious Waters" Image courtesy of the artist.

​We live in a porous world, in porous bodies. The possibility of being breached, infected, and losing body integrity is always present. Climate change is now a point of disruptive convergence, where thresholds between interior and exterior bodies and borders are continuously being breached and in a constant exchange with a shifting and transforming environment. The devastation of Dorian, a category 5 hurricane in 2019, is one example. Dorian decimated many communities in the northern islands of the Bahamas. In response to this I created the installation, "Treading Insidious Waters." Portraits of scientists and environmental activists hang from two life preserver rings. They are outfitted and hyper-ready for a hurricane, but each person also holds a microscope slide in their mouth. Brimming with cholera, their fate is unknown, but between the two life rings a second set of portraits is placed – the scientists and activists now appear fluid, watery, untethered, possibly infected.  

"Treading Insidious Waters" draws attention to the destabilization of human permeable bodies. My artworks explore this fear by portraying the invisible world of teeming microbial life as luminous beauty but with the terrifying possibility of infection. It challenges viewers’ perceptions about their bodies – sites that are continually trespassed, tainted, and contaminated by a culture that escalates social anxiety and terror of microbes, fueling a sense of bioparanoia.
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"Treading Insidious Waters" detail. Image courtesy of the artist.

"Treading Insidious Waters" detail. Image courtesy of the artist.

Elaine Whittaker is a Canadian visual artist working at the intersection of art, science, medicine, and ecology. She considers biology as contemporary art practice and as the basis for her installations, sculptures, paintings, drawings, and digital images. Whittaker has exhibited nationally and internationally, in art and science galleries and museums in Canada, France, Italy, UK, Ireland, Latvia, China, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, and the U.S. Artwork created as Artist-in-Residence with the Pelling Laboratory for Augmented Biology (University of Ottawa) was exhibited in La Fabrique du Vivant at the Pompidou Centre, Paris  in 2019.  She was also one of the first Artists-in-Residence with the Ontario Science Centre in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto. Her work has also been featured in art, literary, and medical magazines, and books, including Bio Art: Altered Realities by William Myers (2015).

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Darya Warner

​I work at the intersection of art and science with an emphasis on the interconnectivity of intelligence across species through the prism of climate change. My projects explore the "Biophilia Hypothesis" as a crucial factor in reconnecting humans and nature via interactive installations, visual displays, photography, sound, time- based media, and bioart in the new form of hybrid matter. Since I work with living matter the concept of contamination has evolved to be an integral part of the work.

​“Reticulum hybrida” is an interactive installation that explores the concepts of human non/human networks cross-contaminating each other through time and space. Here, the mycelium of Pleurotus ostreatus species has been introduced to the paper (with laser-etched collection sites) to create its own networks for the two weeks of active participatory assistance in growth from the audience through sound stimulation. Some studies have proven that specific sine waves can induce healthy growth in certain organisms. Within two weeks the mycelium was over-completed by common green mold, Trichoderma harzianum, which grew in circular patterns responding to the sound stimulation. The dishes were moved by the audience during the open hours except the ‘control’ in the middle, which did not produce any ‘rings’. This project continues to investigate nature and man made patterns and networks, the cross contamination nature of the collaborative practices between human and non-human agents towards formation of the common ground for coexistence.
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"Reticula hybrida" interactive installation. Image courtesy of the artist.

Installation view. Image courtesy of the artist.

Installation view. Image courtesy of the artist.

Born in Ukraine, Darya Warner immigrated to the U.S. in 2001. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2014 with a focus on Bioart and received her MFA at the University at Buffalo in conjunction with Coalesce Biological Lab in 2020. She works in the notions of climate change, Biophilia,  sustainable art practices, and systems of intelligence. Darya is a co-founder and Director of Operations at CAYO Residency, an Art and Science residency based in the Bahamas focused on bridging biological research and artistic collaboration. Darya has participated in several bio art conferences and symposiums including LASER Talks and Bioart Mixer, she has exhibited globally and received grants to support her projects. Darya is based in Buffalo and Brooklyn and was recently awarded an Honorary Research Fellowship at  Coalesce Biological Lab for the 2020-2021 season.

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Andranik Aroutiounian

​This series titled “The Gods Always Watching Us” is inspired by the epic of history, including history of art from Antiquity to Baroque to Pop Art, as one period contaminates another. One form corrupts another, both visually by combining seemingly opposite forms, and conceptually through historical references as one era contaminates another. “Archimedes” reference two different forms, his head a perfect sphere in contrast to his somewhat brutal form of his body. This suggests the move from the Archaic to Classical period, as a new era with a scientific vision of the world surpasses the old. Likewise, “Mickeytaur” shows one icon from antiquity (Minotaur) contaminated by another icon from the 20th century (Micky Mouse). Several of the works contain gold, a reference to King Midas, who’s magic power contaminated all objects he touched. If King Midas were drinking Coca Cola, the bottle would turn to gold. “Message from the Past in the Future” depicts six Coca Cola bottles covered in tar, a material that references petroleum catastrophes of our age, conjuring up images of environmental disasters in rivers and oceans, such as suffering oil-covered birds. Coca Cola epitomizes an era of mass consumption, where bottles end up in rivers, oceans, and landfills.  Coca Cola is not only in disposable bottles but is shipped around the world, leaving a heavy carbon footprint and lasting contamination.
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"Archimedes" Clay sculpture and ping pong ball with gold leaf. Image courtesy of the artist.

"End of the Golden Age" Coca Cola bottles with gold. Image courtesy of the artist.

"Mickeytaur" Ping pong ball and wax with paint. Image courtesy of the artist.

"Message from the Past in the Future" Coca Cola bottles with tar. Image courtesy of the artist.

​Andranik Aroutiounian is an internationally renowned artist who works in painting, sculpture, and drawing. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Art from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Genève in Switzerland. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including an Impossible Sites Artist Award from Black Cube Nomadic Contemporary Art Museum and the Willem de Kooning Academy Fellowship for Painting. Recent exhibitions include: A City of All Cities, a solo show at the Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation in East Hampton, New York; Color 2020, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA) Museum, South Korea; Making a Way, South Bend Museum of Art, Indiana; Message in a Bottle, Edward Hopper Museum, Nyack, New York; Creative Distancing, Art Museum of South Texas; The Babel Masks, Das Kapitol Kunstraum, Berlin, Germany; and Tête-à-Tête, Westport Art Center, Connecticut. Aroutiounian currently lives and works in New York City.

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