The Substrate of Extraction: A Bio Art Show

MESH_ARTS & UAAD present The Substrate of Extraction What can a cell reveal about ownership? What can a microorganism transmit across generations and borders? What histories remain in a grain of sand, a fragment of plastic, or the shell of a dead barnacle? Spanning biotechnology, traditional craft, sculpture, scent, moving image, and computational media, the works in The Substrate of Extraction turn to materials and processes that often remain beneath the threshold of human attention. Cells divide, mold spreads, mealworms digest, plastics circulate, scents diffuse, and biological remains acquire digital afterlives. Yet histories of industrial production, resource extraction, ecological transformation, and unequal exchange have always been embedded within matter itself. A substrate is the matter upon which something grows, acts, or leaves a trace. In this exhibition, it is both what extraction operates upon and the ground through which extraction reveals itself. Through dialogue…