An ongoing body of work. Rebiosis Ritual, The Rest Gallery, Ithaca, NY, 2023. Rebiosis (image series), Biomedical Institute of Research, Barcelona, 2022.
What if, among the fear and aversion of the other, we took a leap of faith into deep communion, with ingestion as the most intimate interspecies communication? What if biodiversity was lost not only in external ecosystems but in ourselves?
Rebiosis is a performance of intimacy with microorganisms, an act of communion through ingestion. The participant eats and consumes the microbes that nourish and sustain us. Some will be digested. Some will stay to participate in the eater’s microbiome.
The edible sculptures represent imaginaries of microbial life as we have never seen it before, not through the mediating lens of microscopy or commercial imagery, but through abstraction and wonder. Much as a painting might reveal more of a person’s nature than a photograph, these forms pursue a deeper truth than strict representation allows. They propose microorganisms as subjects of contemplation: living organisms in their own right, not merely triggers of fear or instruments of use.
Rebiosis has not yet been fully enacted. The fear of bacteria remains so prevalent that the performance, eating an act of interspecies intimacy, has generated too much institutional friction to be presented. It exists so far as a visual installation (Rebiosis Ritual, The Rest Gallery, Ithaca, 2023) and as a publication produced during an artist residency at the Biomedical Institute of Research, Barcelona (2022). The performance awaits.
Rebiosis
Ongoing series, 2022 — present
Rebiosis Ritual: Edible probiotic sculptures, wax sculptures, data visualisation installation
Rebiosis Image series
Rebiosis Ritual shown at:
– The Death of a Naturalist, The Rest Gallery, Ithaca, NY, 2023. Curated by Rodrigo Guzmán Serrano and Camaron Cohen. Supported by Cornell Council for the Arts.
– Devenires Transespecie, Galeria Municipal, Queretaro, Queretaro, 2024. Curated by Mónica Garrido.
Rebiosis (image series) produced at: Artist residency, Biomedical Institute of Research (IRB), Barcelona, 2022.