Suzanne Anker, Vanitas (in a Petri dish) #73

Investigating the border-zones where fact meets fiction, the intersection of art and science continues to take a global turn. Customizing molecules as vectors of cure, the genetic revolution resurrects the avant-garde and spins its locus into and out of the laboratory. Taxongenomic crash smashes Linnaeus’ beliefs in systems of classification, while cohabitation abides between silicon and flesh. This transmutable molecule DNA is a bio-archive, never failing to astonish in its infinite plasticity. It is something of a “book of life” and a “recipe for surveillance,” something of a “deed to a body-part farm,” something of an “elixir of immortality,” welcome to the genetic age. I frequently work with “pre-defined and found materials”, botanical specimens, medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatus, microscopic images and geological specimens. I use a variety of mediums ranging from digital sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED lights.