Experimental Art Practice

Join us for Marta de Menezes’ artist presentation.
When: February 23, 6pm
Where: 300-100 Arthur Street
Cost: free

Marta’s talk explores the multiple possibilities of artistic approaches that can be developed in relation to Art and Biology in contemporary art practice and research. A special emphasis will be placed on the development of collaborative art and biology projects where the artist has to learn some biological research skills in order to create the artwork. To situate the inquiry, she will draw upon her own work (Nature?, Decon and Immortality for Two) to question how our conception of identity and self awareness is built on with the recent advances in the biological sciences. She will ask how the artistic manipulation of life shifts our sense of identity to give rise to new forms of (un)indentities.

Marta de Menezes is a Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts by the University in Lisbon, a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture by the University of Oxford, and a PhD candidacy at the University of Leiden.

She has been exploring the intersection between Art and Biology, working in research laboratories demonstrating that new biological technologies can be used as new art medium. In 1999 de Menezes created her first biological artwork (Nature?) by modifying the wing patterns of live butterflies. Since then, she has used diverse biological techniques including functional MRI of the brain to create portraits where the mind can be visualised (Functional Portraits, 2002); fluorescent DNA probes to create micro-sculptures in human cell nuclei (nucleArt, 2002); sculptures made of proteins (Proteic Portrait, 2002-2007), DNA (Innercloud, 2003; The Family, 2004) or incorporating live neurons (Tree of Knowledge, 2005) or bacteria (Decon, 2007).

She is currently the artistic director of Ectopia, an experimental art laboratory in Lisbon, and Director of Cultivamos Cultura in the South of Portugal.

The event is wheelchair accessible.