Biological Thresholds

The Ossificatorium marks a key transition from material-based investigations of the body toward bioart and systems-based work. Combining textile, chemical, and tissue-based sculpture with narrative, digital media, and public intervention, the project takes place in both physical and virtual environments. Objects are exhibited in galleries, dispersed in public space, and tracked online, accompanied by speculative osteobiographical texts that situate them within a parallel system of knowledge.

Klondike Osteobiographies combines storytelling, organic sculpture, and web-based interactivity through the placement of abandoned objects. Developed during a residency at the Klondike Institute of Art & Culture in Dawson City, Yukon, the project uses locally sourced biomaterials to construct artificial bones through biomimetic textile scaffolds with mineral crystal growth. These  are paired with osteobiographical texts—narratives recorded as audio—that mutate existing stories of the Klondike.

These images were captured using a hand-built smartphone microscope assembled by hacking components from existing tools. Several images depict handmade histology slides, prepared through the dyeing of mammalian tissue using traditional staining techniques, while others were captured from found vintage microscopy slide collections. Samples include pig fetus, human facial bone, human lung, mouse cerebellum, chicken wing bone, rat kidney, and cochineal beetle.

Nailed was a project to reuse salvaged hand-made nails recovered during the renovation of the Charlotte Street Arts Centre in New Brunswick—a designated historic building constructed in 1884. Having been involved with the Arts Centre since its opening in 2005 and overseeing part of the renovation during which the nails were salvaged, Hunter approached these materials through direct engagement with the building’s physical and cultural transformation.

Referencing the visual aspects of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the plague, the work stages growth as relentless colonization. Dense clusters of small, black felted forms resembling microbial or parasitic bodies gather along the edges and corners, accumulating into zones of density that suggest infestation and consumption as growth overtakes a host surface.

A teratoma is a tumour containing multiple tissue and organ forms: hair, teeth, bone, limbs, arising from undeveloped embryonic cells. From the Greek teras, meaning “monster,” it names a condition where growth exceeds structure and produces bodies that are at once familiar and aberrant. Often understood as a parasitic or unformed twin, it occupies a space between presence and absence, potential and failure.

Ossa draws on the vanitas tradition, assembling images of animal remains encountered in studio and outdoor environments. Many of the carcasses were collected or gifted by other artists, forming a distributed archive of death, exchange, and material curiosity. Expanded through various formats, including photographic prints, silk, stitched textile, and etched aluminum, the work explores accumulation and decay.