This month on Live Culture, Martha is delighted to be in conversation with artist Suzanne Anker about her exhibit After Eden, up now at The Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven CT. Suzanne is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and the biological sciences. Her practice investigates the ways in which nature is being altered in the 21st century. Concerned with genetics, climate change, species extinction and toxic degradation, she calls attention to the beauty of life and the “necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank’.”
Anker is a pioneer in Bio Art, focusing on the alteration of nature, in both the natural world and the scientific lab. This exhibition marks the debut of After Eden, Anker’s most recent body of work, comprising a series of photographs and collages constructed over the last two years. Anker frequently works with botanical specimens, medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatus, microscopic images and geological specimens. She works across mediums ranging from digital sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED lights. All of the exhibition images represent botanical specimens she has grown – from flowers to ferns to trees. Employing traditional "cut and paste" techniques of twentieth-century collage, she creates imaginary specimens that one day may be possible to exist. Ceramic sculptures made from deep sea sponges appear as asteroids making the connection between how little we know about the oceans and outer space. Other featured works refer to genetics, the origin of life and synthetic biology.
The show was organized by Gallery Director Debbie Hesse and included a public talk as a part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven.
see more here: https://elycenter.org/
& here: http://suzanneanker.com/
Suzanne's radio project the BioBlurbs on Clocktower radio are available here: https://clocktower.org/series/the-bio-blurb-show
Suzanne Anker: After Eden
June 5 – July 17, 2022
The Ely Center of Contemporary Art
51 Trumbull Street New Haven, CT 06510