'Co-Existence' by Julia Lohmann has been included in BioDesign: Nature + Science + Creativity, a book published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Thames & Hudson, London. Written by design historian William Myers and with a foreword by Paola Antonelli - MoMA's Senior Curator of Architecture and Design - the book profiles new design and art projects that use living materials. According to the publishers, the "works profiled introduce visionary strategies for improving the ecological performance of the objects around us, aesthetic possibilities enabled by new biotechnology and provocative experiments that illuminate both opportunities and dangers in manipulating life for human ends".
'Co-Existence' was Lohmann's acclaimed 2009 window display for the Wellcome Trust, the health research foundation. Comprising the display were 9,000 petri dishes - each containing an image of live bacteria - which collectively formed two reclining nude female figures. Lohmann teamed with Michael Wilson, a microbiologist at University College London, to research the bacteria common to the human body and used corresponding images of the bacteria to create the alternative portrait.
March 5, 2013