Microbial Cosmologies Opening

Link to the curatorial text

Synthetic Imaginaries is an exhibition series curated by Julia Kaganskiy that looks at non-human agency across diverse contexts and scales, exploring how it shapes our understanding of intelligence, free will and complex systems.
 
The first exhibition in the series, Microbial Cosmologies, will open on Friday 29th September at 18.30h and presents three works by Finnish artist Jenna Sutela, who works with biological and computational systems such as bacteria and artificial neural networks to probe the interconnections between humans, microbes and machines.
 
The opening will be followed by a conversation at 19.00h between the artist Inês Neto dos Santos and the planetary scientist Angélica Anglés, moderated by the exhibition curator Julia Kaganskiy.
 

Inês Neto dos Santos is a multi-disciplinary artist, born in Lisbon and based in Brussels. Her practice moves between performance, installation and social sculpture, investigating food in its intertwined socio-political, cultural and ecological dimensions. In her work, Inês creates contexts and frameworks to explore collaboration, generosity, care and togetherness. In recent years, Inês has delved into the practical and metaphorical dimensions of fermentation, as a gateway into our enmeshed, multispecies existence. Inês has exhibited internationally, including at The Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2022), CaixaForum Barcelona (2022), L'été des Serpents (Arles, 2022), 3+1 Gallery (Lisbon, 2021), Design Museum London (2019) and more. She has been a guest lecturer at Kingston University, Brighton University, Royal College of Art and Westminster University. Since March 2021, she has co-lead a series of educational initiatives with artist Nora Silva, as part of their collective The Gramounce, which both artists co-run. In September 2023, they launched the first Food & Art Alternative M.A., a course which seeks to propose food as central to any world-making process. 

Dr. Angélica Anglés is a Planetary Scientist that studies life on Mars. She was part of the Landing Site Selection for the NASA Mars 2020 mission, and one of the five Analog Astronauts for the first UK Analogue Space Mission. She is a Senior Researcher of the Iceland Space Agency, and the Principal Investigator of Mars Analog Expeditions to search for habitable environments in Iceland.  She has won multiple awards, like the Visionary Woman 2020 awarded by Harper’s BAZAAR.