Worked commissioned for Digestible at Artphy, Groningen, NL, 2023.
Lab for Transpecies Becomings is a laboratory bench researching an ancient biological question: the Mexica diet, the enzymes of fungi, a protein transition, and the way the ancestral and microscopic can sustain us in the present and future. The Koji fungus is present as blooming culture, golden crystals, and enzyme powder. At the centre sits El Libro de Etl, a concertina codex of cyanotypes that narrates the ancient alliance between bean and fungus in the format of Mesoamerican bark paper books.
The bench takes as its reference Planta Insuimiza (1961) by Remedios Varo, painted in Mexico, in which a figure tends to a strange botanical apparatus with the devotion of a scientist and the intuition of an alchemist. A microscope on the table invites the visitor to observe the golden crystals of Kojic acid, what the alchemist found researching in this lab, a substance produced by the same Koji fungus that generates the enzyme capable of unlocking the bean’s full nutritional potential. The crystals are a metaphor for our desire to find golden biotechnological solutions to our food problems, and for the alchemist’s ancient dream of acquiring the power to transform matter.
On the wall, cyanotypes present an ancient Mayan representation of the bean plant, a sketch of Varo’s painting, and a 3D model of the enzyme that breaks down the complex carbohydrates in beans. Together, they hold three ways of knowing the same relationship: the ancestral, the artistic, and the molecular.
Technical card :
Lab for Transpecies Becomings 2023
Laboratory bench installation with living organisms, sculptures, cyanotypes, microscope, golden crystals of Kojic acid, and El Libro de Etl
First shown at: Digestible, Artphy, Groningen, NL, 2023 Artwork by Maro Pebo