Welcome to Bioart + Design Africa

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EXHIBITION CLOSING: 19 AUGUST 2023

FADA GALLERY, FACULTY OF ART, DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE BUILDING,

UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG, 17 BUNTING ROAD, AUCKLAND PARK, JOHANNESBURG

The exhibition was opened by Professor Letlhokwa Mpedi, Vice Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg.

Furthering the University of Johannesburg’s position as forerunner in the Fourth Industrial Revolution for humanity – which explores how physical, digital, technological and biological worlds might come together to synthesise new futures – we are excited to announce the launch of the Creative Microbiology Research Co-Lab (CMRC) under Bioart + Design Africa – an inter-faculty collaboration dedicated to producing creative work located at the interface between microbiology, visual representation and practice.

Founded by Prof Leora Farber, Director of the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) Research Centre, in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, and Prof Tobias Barnard, Director of the Water and Health Research Centre (WHRC) in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Bioart + Design Africa is based on the premise that biotechnological art (or bioart) is vested with significant potential to initiate and advance innovative scientific, scholarly and indigenous knowledges in the Humanities and Social Sciences, through visual arts practices.

To mark its launch, Bioart + Design Africa is thrilled to present the first exhibition of bioart to be held in South Africa and on the African continent. Bioart involves artmaking practices that deal with the hands-on application of the latest advances in biotechnology in which ‘life’ – meaning living and non/living matter – is used as a raw material and a subject for artistic production, using (and abusing) scientific practices and protocols.

The exhibition – produced by members of Bioart + Design Africa, who constitute some of the most provocative and inventive South African practitioners working in this field – includes work by VIAD and WHRC Directors Leora Farber and Tobias Barnard, bioart-laboratory manager Xylan de Jager, VIAD artist-in-residence Brenton Maart, as well as VIAD Research Associates, Nelisiwe Xaba, Nadine Botha, Miliswa Ndziba, Nathaniel Stern and Nolan Oswald Dennis. Through their work, these artists explore innovative ways of working with existing biomaterials and producing new ones; introduce speculative ways and methods of working with living and non/living matter; and use interdisciplinary approaches to arrive at research findings that are rooted in practical activities and processes. Charting experimental practices that blur the boundaries between artist and medium, author and collaborator, whilst also engaging theory to explore how microbes might be applied as agents in decolonial practice, they enact and make visible the critical intra-actions and the interspecies entanglements that constitute post-humanist, post-anthropocentric, New Feminist Materialist and decolonial realities.

From its beginnings in the early 1990s, bioart has grown from a niche area of interest to a rapidly emerging field of research. Contemporary bioart is a hybrid form of collaborative, experimentally driven practice in which artists and scientists work together to explore the creative possibilities, and speculative futures, represented by the intersection of these two ‘cultures’. In contrast to the historical conception of art and science as being diametrically opposed, these collaborations encourage transdisciplinary creativity, and are driven by a mutual curiosity and recognition that, in some cases, an objective may only be achieved through unconventional methods.

The exhibition SYM | BIO | ART foregrounds the intermeshing of human and microbial life to create a heightened awareness of how humans are in constant contact with the microbial world. The artworks are made using a diverse range of microbial and biological forms – including pathogenic bacteria, mycelia, viruses and living and non/living plant matter – that render the invisible visible. These works point to how our bodies are an ecosystem, enmeshed with the living and non/living matter that is inside us and surrounds us, and that our microbial environment is simultaneously external and internal – in many ways, we are one and the same. Artists engage with living and non/living materials as collaborators in the creative process and, by blurring the boundaries between artist, medium and collaborator, explore what it means to be interdependent.

Although it is becoming increasingly recognised internationally, bioart is a relatively unknown, under-developed field in South Africa and on the African continent. Therefore, while looking to and acknowledging what has been established in the global north, Bioart + Design Africa is founded on the conviction that bioart holds enormous potential to generate new insights, perspectives and scholarly knowledges that arise from, and pertain specifically to, an African context.

Work conducted under the auspices of the CMRC takes place in a dedicated microbiology laboratory located in the FADA FABLAB. The biolab offers creative practitioners access to specialised scientific equipment, expertise and the ability to work according to advanced scientific protocols, all of which are usually not available to artists. Working in the biolab enables artists to engage with wet biology practices; introduce speculative methods of working with microbial matter that allow for risk and innovation and use interdisciplinary approaches to arrive at research findings that are rooted in practical activities and processes. Artists working in the biolab usually take an experiential, hands-on approach, connected to simultaneous processes of thinking-while-doing and doing-while-thinking via the application of practice-led methodologies within academic frameworks.

This “intra-active” approach contributes to vital debates related to phenomenological questions in the fields of bio-philosophy, bio-politics and bioethics regarding the relationships between humans and the environment, such as: What constitutes life? Who controls life? What are the implications and consequences of manipulating life? How will these technologies affect interactions with the environment? How can we create with consideration and care? How may we think and practice with life? Can we imagine new practices and patterns of thinking? How might we live with contamination and its risks? And, finally, by bringing new methodologies and materials into artistic realms, how can artists play a role in critically and creatively shaping our current and future ecologies?

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, as well as a physical, online and hybrid public programme featuring a range of conversations, panel discussions, presentations, exhibition walkabouts and creative interventions. Here, participants can hear directly from, and engage with the artists, as well as scientists, lawyers, engineers, and experts across a diverse range of fields in the Humanities, as well as those working in the fields of Visual Art and Design. Please join us on this exciting journey of towards imagining and enacting new ways of being in the world.

For more information, contact:

Sinead Fletcher: sineadf@uj.ac.za

Dineo Diphofa: dineod@uj.ac.za

Gallery contact:

Eugene Hon

Director, FADA Gallery

Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture

University of Johannesburg

0848402691

eugeneh@uj.ac.za

Gallery hours: Tues to Fri: 9:00 – 16:00

Sat: 9:00 – 13:00 Closed Mondays, public & university holidays

The Artists

Leora Farber

Nadine Botha

Xylan de Jager

Miliswa Ndziba

Nathaniel Stern

Nelisiwe Xaba

Brenton Maart

Nolan Oswald Dennis

Tobias Barnard

Documentary Video

Installation Images

Images from the opening night

Thoughts from Dr Ndivhuwo Luruli, Executive Director of Research & Innovation at the University of Johannesburg. To read the full post, click here.

Publicity

Click the image to read.

Watch VIAD Director Leora Farber discuss bio-art on Newzroom Afrika.

Watch VIAD Director Leora Farber discuss bio-art on eNCA.

Watch VIAD Director Leora Farber discuss bio-art on Morning Live.

Public Programming

INTRA-ACTIONS SERIES

Intra-actions is a monthly series, which kicked off with a live panel discussion between artists featured in the SYM | BIO | ART exhibition at the FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg in July 2023.