Finding Children of Compost - First generation symbiont team
This project is a response to Donna Haraway’s call for “collaborative and divergent story-making practice” by making small experimental sculptures-symbionts to articulate the relationship between human and non-human. The sculpture acts as ‘a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling us to experience the universe, and collectively transform the ruined universe by imagination and proposition of stories.”[1] In these soft sculptures that I call my Children of Compost Symbionts, I assemble elements from all beings around me, including human, flora and fauna into non-hierarchical entities. They were born with the mission to question anthropocentrism, and explore new possibilities and meanings of co-existence to generate hope, care and empathy in the process.
I started making the first-generation symbionts in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 when public space was inaccessible, while anxiety, economic hardship, and social injustice dominated the public discourse. The poor must keep working under health threats while the privileged can isolate from infection. Escape from reality becomes a way to reflect and recoup in order to come back and change the broken systems. Many contemporary artists are facilitating the escape for meaningful outcomes. The fantastic Yayoi Kusama tirelessly bringing us to the infinite unbound universe and back. Artists like Raul De Nieves open the door of wonder and play with his shiny, bejewelled paintings and sculptures[2], and Cao Fei transports us to virtual reality. [3] Accordingly, my whimsical symbionts inspire stories that transform anxiety and despair into new possibilities and new knowledge.
[1] Donna Haraway, “Playing String Figures with Companion Species”, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2016).
[2] Evan Moffitt. ”Raul De Nieves.” Frieze, no. 219, (2021).
[3] Fei’s documentary “Imirror” (2007) was filmed entirely in Second Life. Ferrando, Francesca. “A Feminist Genealogy of Posthuman Aesthetics in the Visual Arts.” Palgrave communications 2, no. 1 (2016).
The UniV team is presented through two media: still images (photographs) and slides projection.
Link to the slides projection is as follows: https://vimeo.com/470879179
This project is a response to Donna Haraway’s call for “collaborative and divergent story-making practice” by making small experimental sculptures-symbionts to articulate the relationship between human and non-human. The sculpture acts as ‘a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling us to experience the universe, and collectively transform the ruined universe by imagination and proposition of stories.”[1] In these soft sculptures that I call my Children of Compost Symbionts, I assemble elements from all beings around me, including human, flora and fauna into non-hierarchical entities. They were born with the mission to question anthropocentrism, and explore new possibilities and meanings of co-existence to generate hope, care and empathy in the process.
I started making the first-generation symbionts in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 when public space was inaccessible, while anxiety, economic hardship, and social injustice dominated the public discourse. The poor must keep working under health threats while the privileged can isolate from infection. Escape from reality becomes a way to reflect and recoup in order to come back and change the broken systems. Many contemporary artists are facilitating the escape for meaningful outcomes. The fantastic Yayoi Kusama tirelessly bringing us to the infinite unbound universe and back. Artists like Raul De Nieves open the door of wonder and play with his shiny, bejewelled paintings and sculptures[2], and Cao Fei transports us to virtual reality. [3] Accordingly, my whimsical symbionts inspire stories that transform anxiety and despair into new possibilities and new knowledge.
[1] Donna Haraway, “Playing String Figures with Companion Species”, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2016).
[2] Evan Moffitt. ”Raul De Nieves.” Frieze, no. 219, (2021).
[3] Fei’s documentary “Imirror” (2007) was filmed entirely in Second Life. Ferrando, Francesca. “A Feminist Genealogy of Posthuman Aesthetics in the Visual Arts.” Palgrave communications 2, no. 1 (2016).
The UniV team is presented through two media: still images (photographs) and slides projection.
Link to the slides projection is as follows: https://vimeo.com/470879179