Text by Felipe Osornio
Biomedia: illness, art, and medicine is an itinerant video exhibition that brings together artistic proposals from different parts of the world that incorporate biotechnological methods to address, question, or decode medical knowledge surrounding the body and illness.
The curational line of the projects starts from the concept of biomedia defined by Eugene Thacker as particular mediations of the body and optimisations of the biological in which “technology” seems to disappear completely, adhering to a constant, consistent and methodical investigation of the techno-philosophical questions: ‘What a body can do?’ raised previously by thinkers such as Baruch or Deleuze.
What can or cannot do to a sick body? How appropriate or problematise medical knowledge? These are some of the questions that this exhibition seeks to make visible directly from the hand of artists who, through their works, dynamite the conventions around the role played by medical science in our current societies. Over time, medical science has marked the separation between health and disease, directly impacting our relationship with our bodies and environments. Biomedia: illness, art, and medicine focus on the particular cases in which biological components and processes are (re)contextualised for artistic purposes to erase the line between concepts such as art and science, biological and technology, patient and doctor, health and sickness, and life and death.
The exhibition has been carried out between performance artist Felipe Osornio “Lechedevirgen Trimegisto”, and Meritxell Rosell and Lula Criado, editors of CLOT Magazine, an online publication platform dedicated to the crossover of art, science and technology.
The selected artists’ group by the curational team involve Cecilia Bullo, Th3Max, Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy, Marta de Menezes, Luis Graça, Quimera Rosa, Caro Novella, Dani d’Emilia, Oncogrrrls, Gaël(le) Emilia, and Lechedevirgen Trimegisto.
Biomedia: illness, art, and medicine open on November 13, until December 9, 2019, at Contemporary Museum of Queretaro, Mexico.
