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Artists probe the porous boundary between flesh and technology, turning living matter into sculptures that question how bodies are designed—and redesigned.
Walk into Bio Morphe and the first thing you notice is the pulse of the room. Louise Bourgeois’s latex forms sag against steel; Berenice Olmedo’s prosthetic exoskeletons hover like patient diagrams; Christina Quarles’s painted limbs spill past their own frames. Curated by Frauke Jürgensen, the show gathers twenty-one artists who treat anatomy less as fact than as mutable raw matter—something that can be scanned, rewired, or rebuilt. Their materials range from lab-grown cellulose and medical-grade silicone to the soft vinyl of Eva Fàbregas’s inflatable organs, and each piece asks a quietly urgent question: What happens when the body becomes just another site of design?
Berenice Olmedo, Aither, 2022 — A 3-D–printed spinal scan cast in polyurethane resin hovers inside a stainless-steel gimbal, suggesting a body held in perpetual rehab. Courtesy Jan Kaps, Cologne.
The exhibition’s structure mirrors a kind of speculative dissection. Tishan Hsu’s data-soaked tableaus hint at neural networks; Lucy Kim coats cast faces with living algae, letting pigment shift under gallery lights; Sui Park knots cable ties into coral-like lattices that suggest uncharted biomes. Meanwhile, a new dance commission by JESSE and a sound work by Caroline Shawn circulate through the space, reminding viewers that embodiment is never static. Panel talks with bio-engineers and disability activists extend the conversation, probing how future therapies might redraw the line between enhancement and autonomy.
What stays with you, though, is the show’s insistence on material honesty. No polished futurism, no tech evangelism—just flesh, scaffolds, and the uneasy beauty of things that almost breathe. In a cultural moment crowded with promises of perfect optimization, Bio Morphe grounds speculation in touch, weight, and vulnerability. It suggests that any new biology worth wanting will need more than upgraded hardware; it will need a recalibration of empathy, starting with the bodies—and the prosthetics—we already inhabit.
Bio Morphe is on view at the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, from August 30 through December 14, 2024.
Christina Quarles, The Absence of Yew, 2024 — Interlaced limbs slide off the canvas edge, their gender and orientation undecidable. Acrylic on canvas, courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
Eva Fàbregas, Exudates, 2023 — Soft silicone bladders cluster like overripe fruit, oozing an uneasy tactility that toes the line between organism and object.
Louise Bourgeois, The Couple, 2003 — Two figures twist into a single, inseparable form, cast here in polished stainless steel. Private Collection, Houston.
Sui Park, Microcosms, 2022 — Hand-knotted cable ties form a riot of cell-like shapes that float and sprout across the gallery floor. Courtesy Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
Tishan Hsu, Interface Remix, 2021 — Pigmented silicone embeds facial fragments in a pixel-like field, hinting at data sets built from human skin. Courtesy the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York.
