Engaging the Margins Group Exhibition

January 25 - April 19, 2025
Beall Center for Art + Technology
University of California, Irvine
Co-Curators: Antoinette LaFarge & Jesse Colin Jackson

https://beallcenter.uci.edu/exhibitions/engaging-margins

Engaging the Margins brings together a group of contemporary artists dedicated to exploring the intersections between artmaking, practice-based research, and scholarship. This exhibition challenges the boundaries that often marginalize artists working across various disciplines. Among the featured artists, Dr. Jennifer Willet presents a compelling new iteration of her project, The Gentleman Scientist: Microecologies.

Exhibition Artists Include:
Ava Aviva Avnisan
Rebecca Cummins
Krista-Leigh Davis
Yvette Granata and Alina Nazmeeva
Catherine Griffiths
Nina Vroemen
Jennifer Willet
Jiayi Young

To learn more about the curators, visit their websites:
https://beallcenter.uci.edu/exhibitions/engaging-margins http://www.antoinettelafarge.com/
https://jessecolinjackson.com/

To learn more about the Beall Centre for Art + Technology, visit: https://beallcenter.uci.edu www.beallcenter.uci.edu Gentleman Scientist: Microecologies (2023-25)

In 2017, Jennifer Willet developed a performative alter ego called the Gentleman Scientist, an entertaining and gender fluid critique of the Western tradition of scientific rationality. The Gentleman Scientist is a ringmaster, a specialist, a time traveler, a buffoon, whose once white coat is filthy collecting debri and passengers as it moves through ecologies and time. The coat has 8 snow globes attached to the front and back like mutant breasts or egg sacks. Within each snow globe live colonies of microorganisms, bacteria, yeast, algae.

Gentleman Scientist: Microecologies is a 360° diorama installation installed on a sewing mannequin, which serves as a portrait of her alter ego The Gentleman Scientist. The Gentleman Scientist is a ringmaster, a specialist, a time traveler, a buffoon, whose once white coat is filthy. He has 8 snow globes attached to the front and back like plastic breasts or egg sacks. Within each snow globe live colonies of microorganisms, bacteria, yeast, algae. Gentleman Scientist: Microecologies is a cacophony ecology of human and non-human organisms living, reproducing and dying in a shared laboratory environment.