Maro Pebo (Mexico City).
Weaving collaborations, Maro Pebo works on defying anthropocentrism and on skeptical environmental accountability. Her transdisciplinary work subverts the monopoly of the life sciences to think biological matter and aims to release the indiscipline of living cells.
Ph.D. in Creative Media at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, her research revolved around art and biology, epistemology, history of science, new materialism, biohacking, wetware, and bacteria. She received an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship to study a Master in Gender Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy, researching feminist epistemology in contemporary art. She holds a BA in Art History at Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.
Maro Pebo specializes in the intersections of art, science, and biotechnology. Her current interest lies in microorganisms’ cultures and a microbial posthuman turn. Maro has published and presented her research internationally including at Performance Research, ISEA, EVA, ISCMA, and Media Art Histories, co-curated the Open Systems salon, the HK Leonardo Art Science Rendezvous, and was involved in the Mexican Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale. She is currently the Senior lecturer of Moist Media at DeTao Masters Academy, Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. Her works have been displayed at the Toronto Design Festival, Gerdau Museum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and The Lahore Media Arts Festival in Pakistan. She has been awarded the Erasmus Mundus, HKPFS, and PAPIAM grants. Her latest work “Microbial Emancipation” explores the intimate relationship of humans and microorganisms, by sacrificing the artist cells to prove the deepest symbiotic interdependence between humans and the ancient bacteria that become our mitochondria.
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She liked to think of herself as descendant of Genghis Khan and her Asian eyes caused suspicion, but no one imagined a traveler sailing from Hong Kong. A hundred years later, his name had been forgotten, just a sound remained: Ǹg.
Asian eyes, feeling like a leaf moved by the wind, behaving like a liquid with no will of its own, pushed into an already full subway train. Those are the mornings in Mexico City.
Unfitting, unexplainable green eyes witnessing The Horror.
Unfitting, unexplainable green Asian eyes down south near the Tropical jungle, holding soft little brown hands of 40 children, in circle, singing tirelessly game songs, laughing our hearts out. Toothless mischievous smiling faces.
Bio developed in the context of The New Definitely Post/Transnational and Mostly Portable Open Epic as Rendered by the Elastic Circus of the Revolution by Amir Parsa.
Mariana Pérez BOBADILLA 出生於墨西哥城，為一位關注藝術與科學交匯的藝術史學家。她持有波隆那大學性別研究碩士學位。她曾參與第56屆威尼斯雙年展的墨西哥館（Mexican Pavilion）展出。她的學術培訓包括Rosi Braidotti課程以及2014年光州藝術雙年展國際策展人課程。她在創意媒體學院的博士學位研究圍繞藝術及生物學、知識論、新唯物主義及細菌。
Ela nasceu em uma família de cientistas e deu continuidade à estas veias de um outro modo: sua pesquisa é transdisciplinar e envolve, principalmente, a microbiologia e a tecnologia, porém pensadas materialmente no lugar da arte. Em sua trajetória acadêmica, @maro_pebo transitou por diferentes países: em seu mestrado na Itália, sua pesquisa foi voltada para uma compreensão da vida para além da experiência humana, na intenção de observar como a transformação epistemológica da compreensão do universo transforma nossas relações de poder. E em seu doutorado em Hong Kong, a artista construiu uma trajetória de alfabetização popular sobre a importância da microbiologia para manutenção e estruturação da vida, tentando desmistificar a ideia comum de que micróbios são inimigos e reconstruir o pensamento a partir da noção de que eles fazem parte de nossa estrutura física e ecossistema, atuando fundamentalmente.
(Text prepared by the Gerdau Museum in Bello Horizonte, Brazil Ilustração de @grillobarbaram)