Visceral exhibit showcases art made with living tissue

“There is something that makes us a little uneasy, perhaps even queasy, about the idea of creating artworks from living tissue,” said Science Gallery director Michael John Gorman. “While we are increasingly comfortable with the use of digital technologies for artistic purposes, the very idea of tissue-engineering becoming an art form makes us squirm. The work exhibited in VISCERAL forms a series of provocations, asking us to consider the myriad of possible implications of our new biotechnological toolkit.”

This is a show put together by the university of western Australia's symboticA researches from several countries. An exploration of the boundaries between science and art which is something i am very interested in .  

One of the exhibits is the Semi-Living Worry Dolls, created by Australia’s Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr. Inspired by traditional Guatemalan hand-crafted worry dolls, they were reportedly the first tissue-engineered sculptures to ever be presented “alive” in a gallery, when they made their debut 11 years ago. The dolls are made from biodegradable polymers seeded with living cells, and housed within a micro-gravity bioreactor. Throughout the course of the exhibit, the cells will gradually replace the polymers, making the dolls – sort of – come to life.