non/living biotech installation with living bacterial culture, microbial biofilm, the artist’s urine extract, laboratory glassware, silicone tube, metal wire, variable dimensions.
The non/living installation W.01 from the acclaimed series Wombs features hanging organ-like scientific glassware hosting biofilm-producing bacterial colonies. Its culture medium is infused with hormones metabolites and residues extracted from the artist’s urine by re-staging scientific methods.
The series meditates on sexuality and hormonal contraception from an environmental, more-than-human perspective. It considers how bodies are unsealed, unstable and leaky. The fluids in our cells connect us to deep time waters while molecules are digested, accumulated and excreted in the flow of mucus, sweat and urine. Our leaky materiality entwines our everyday choices with a multitude of other bodies, living and non/living, human and non/human, in bonds of mutual vulnerability.
The project propagates through interconnected interventions featuring biological art, performances and photography. The project reclaims the importance of hormonal contraception and therapy. Sex steroids in hormonal contraceptives modulate human sexual organs to prevent pregnancy. Yet, the same molecules may trigger the endocrine system of other organisms. On that basis, Wombs wonders how the progestine-based contraceptive the artist takes may link their body to other, more-than-human bodies. By reclaiming vulnerability and toxic embodiment, Wombs prompts a critical rethinking of the discourses on sexuality and contraception as a human-only experience enclosed in one’s own body.
Known for her otherworldly work with living matter, ecology and biotechnology, Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher addressing taboos like death, sex and vulnerability. Her practice embraces object-making, installation, performance and writing.
Her project Lament on wildfire ecologies was awarded the COAL Prize Transformative territories mention 2024, and Wombs W.01 received the Honorary Mention at the Share Prize 2018. Her artworks have been shown at Ars Electronica (AT), iMAL (BE), Foundation L’Art Pur (KSA), Kersnikova (SI), Kiasma Theatre (FI), KONTEJNER (HR), Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Volkstheater Wien (AT) and Wiener Festwochen (AT), among others.
Among her initiatives are the performance group Fronte Vacuo (with Marco Donnarumma), the exhibition Membranes Out of Order (with Theresa Schubert and Karolina Żyniewicz) and the series Krude Kunst.
Recent artscience partnerships include the EC JRC, the Department Experimental Immunology / HZI and the Ecological Novelty Group/FU Berlin. Her publications cover aesthetics and environmental humanities.
W.01 was produced by Margherita Pevere at Biofilia lab – Base for biological arts, Aalto University, during her doctorate supported by the Finnish Education Agency.