Calling All Untethered Organisms is a video animation by Jennifer Willet exploring the experience of self-isolation and caring for young children during the first months of the COVID-19 Pandemic…

Baroque Biology presents a feminist science-fiction where biotechnology manifests interspecies collaboration, reproduction, theatre and storytelling as a means to re-imagine our shared biotech future. The exhibition presents a series of imaginary biotechnological vignettes including digital images, performative sculptures, and living cultures; where non-human organisms interact with humans in an effort to convey information about complex biological processes. The artist reimagines laboratory aesthetics as feminine, gawdy, and fantastical in direct contradiction to the norms of contemporary laboratory design. The artworks are counterintuitive, imagining biotechnology research as an integrated part of our planetary ecology and everyday life. Like fairy tales for a […]

Baroque Biology (Paper Theatre) is a series of LB Agar petri dishes containing imaginary biological vignettes where non-human organisms teach humans complex biotechnological processes. Reminiscent of William Hogarth’s serial engravings, each vignette builds on the narrative established in earlier installments. Like fairy tales from a biotech future, each allegory focuses on a fox, or a microbe, a plant or fungi, who tries to communicate with humans in a helpful manner about the biological processes they employ for survival, for reproduction, and/or aesthetic pleasure. Sometimes the human characters are open to receiving the communicated information, and sometimes they are hostile, or […]

The Algae Spiral is the first iteration of a new series of installations ‘drawing’ with tubes of live algae on the gallery wall. In this instance spirulina algae, a nutritional supplement. More generally, the algae spiral becomes a jumping off point to consider algae’s roles as a superfood, as the largest producer of oxygen in our atmosphere, as a possible source of biofuel, and as an invasive species infesting waters in The Great Lakes. The design of the Algae Spiral is intended to evoke motifs from the technical and hard sciences as well as the decorative arts. But most importantly, […]

The Great Lakes Algae Organ (2016) a bicycle propelled street organ that grows and displays living spirulina algae. Audiences are invited to enjoy live organ music while engaging with a live algae colony. The organ becomes a talking point to discuss algae’s many roles as a superfood, as the largest producer of oxygen in our atmosphere, as a possible source of biofuel, and as an invasive species infesting waters in The Great Lakes. People are invited to crank the street organ and view living samples of algae under the microscope. It is an absurdist object – connecting the science and […]