From war-torn landscapes to living canvases, BioArt transforms trauma into healing.

Prof. Boryana Rossa explores work by Oksana Kazmina

Using Science to Understand Art

Exhibitions like Needles in a Haystack prove that art is not confined to a particular medium or style. Nor is it static.

BioArt embodies this dynamic ethos, having grown out of multinational collaborations in the 1990s. Initially known for its shock value, BioArt has since mainstreamed through its embrace of artistic, cultural and scientific principles. In fact, some scientists are turning to BioArt to spur biomedical applications.

Hehnly uses it to probe the molecular origins of disease. “Artists have always been interested in the relationship between living and nonliving organisms,” says the inaugural Renée Crown Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics and the newly appointed associate director of the BioInspired Institute. “With BioArt, we adapt scientific methods and biotechnologies to explore living systems as artistic subjects.”

She and Rossa are the brains behind the University’s Bio-Art Mixer, a popular series of lectures, workshops and exhibitions. Much of their work is documented by microscopes in the Blatt BioImaging Center, where genes, cells and tissues constitute a new kind of canvas.