BIOMATERIA: BIOTEXTILE CRAFT

2014-16

Biomateria: Biotextile Craft is a vital materialist mixed media and digital installation, as well as a research-creation project oriented toward formal scientific outcomes. The work investigates the aesthetic, conceptual, and practical intersections between textile techniques, wet biology laboratory practices, and micro-ecology. Central to this inquiry is the relationship between nonhuman agents—mammalian cells—and human technological and creative systems, explored through the construction of textile-based forms seeded with cell lines.

Emerging from this body of work is a methodological framework termed "haptic epistemology," which positions making as a mode of knowledge production grounded in touch, process, and material negotiation. The project foregrounds the physical, political, and cultural dimensions of life science practices, treating laboratory work as both technical procedure and site of critical inquiry.

Biomateria engages a range of intersecting concerns within bioart, including DIYbio and biohacking, ethics, institutional structures, and the conditions of artistic labour. It examines how interdisciplinary practices between art and science operate within and against existing systems of policy, governance, and knowledge production, while also considering the economic and material realities that shape these fields from a feminist materialist and craft-based perspective.

The works presented in exhibition contexts combine actual and representational elements. Applied scientific technologies, institutional markers, and artistic manipulations are displayed in tandem, producing layered environments in which material processes, symbolic systems, and bureaucratic frameworks coexist and are made visible.

The work has been featured in numerous publications, including a globally distributed self-published artist book comprising protocols, stories, and critical writing, alongside a catalogue of the works presented in the exhibition. Select works from this body of work have been exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica, the Subtle Technologies Festival, Hessel Museum (Bard College), MIAN, and FOFA Gallery, among others. The written thesis is hosted by Leonardo.

This project was supported through in-kind infrastructural support from Fluxmedia, Sacher Lab, and the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University, as well as technical support from the former Pelling Lab for Biophysical Manipulation at the University of Ottawa. The work was funded through SSHRC, Concordia University and Hexagram, and received a prize from the FRQSC, bestowed by the Chief Scientist of Quebec, and an honorary ambassadorship with the Palais de congrès de Montréal. The work has been cited in scholarly theses and journals and is featured in the forthcoming Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Textiles, Textile Futures.