Anna Dumitriu uses pathogens in her art, and helps to uncover new insights in biology through her unconventional collaborations.
Macabre and beautiful, intellectually challenging and requiring technically complex scientific procedures, the extraordinary artworks of Anna Dumitriu are very hard to describe. There’s a gold-plated brass amulet, for example, which contains a recently developed vaccine against the plague, and a vessel of yeast that captures carbon and uses it to produce biodegradable plastic. Cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis, HIV – none of it is off limits for her art.
“I work with a lot of DNA, living things, bacteria,” says Dumitriu. “Over the past few years, I’ve done a bit of work with stem cells as well,” she adds. “And robots, of course. I love robots.”
Based in Brighton, England, Dumitriu collaborates with top scientists throughout Europe and the USA, and is one of the first artists to deliberately use pathogens in her works, which are held in major collections in institutions around the world. With a master’s in fine arts and a post-graduate diploma in research methodology from the University of Brighton, she moves between the worlds of art and science, creating works that explore topics such as genetic sequencing and microbial ecology. She’s won multiple awards, including the Grand Prize: Best Art Overall in the Microbe Art 2020 Competition of the Federation of European Microbiology Societies, nomination in the Science and Art Category in the 2021 EU S+T+ARTS Prize and a winner in Falling Walls 2021
A common thread that runs through Dumitriu’s work is a sense of unease – art that replicates the chaos of nature to eerie effect. Dumitriu counts Eduardo Kac, an American artist who in 1997 coined the term bioart, as a major inspiration. Kac famously invented a new strain of pink petunia, which expressed genes from his blood in its bright red veins. “It’s a very beautiful thing,” says Dumitriu, “but it does play with this idea of the monstrous as well.”
A new way of working
Producing her sophisticated pieces involves diving into research with biologists and chemists and working alongside them in intensive workshops. “I get them to teach me everything that they’re working on and their techniques,” she says. “I do it alongside them, or sometimes on my own, depending on how advanced I am at the particular thing.”
Such collaborations can often help the scientists develop new techniques or make new discoveries, as they are pushed in new directions, says Dumitriu.
In a 2016 piece called Engineered Antibody, for example, Dumitriu worked with scientists at the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at the University of California, Irvine to produce a necklace made from 452 handmade beads, which both represent and physically contain the 21 amino acids of an antibody in the blood of an HIV-positive patient.
“I told the researchers, I want to put the amino acids in the protein structure. I want to put the crystallised amino acids inside beads, and then string those amino acids in the exact order they are in the antibody, and then wrap them in the exact protein structure,’” Dumitriu recalls. “They were like, ‘You don’t want to do that. That’s mad. It’s way to complicated’ But we did it. One researcher, when he was trying to help me make the protein structure, realised that something that he thought was right was wrong, and he had to change his scientific model because of what he discovered through helping me make the art.”
Art is an innovative and creative force, which often allows exploration of scientific theories and concepts in ways that traditional science doesn’t, says Dumitriu. In 2004, she founded the Institute of Unnecessary Research, which is “part arts collective, part think tank”, and aims to encourage curiosity-driven research among researchers and artists.
“There are a lot of scientists who aren’t able to look outside the questions that they’re funded to research,” says Dumitriu. “The funding structures impose what they’re allowed to study, and so there’s very little time to play about or make and happy accidents.”
Deeper understanding
Dumitriu hopes that her art will challenge assumptions that people make about scientific research, highlighting, for example, the fact that the process of discovery is often one of incremental trial and error.
People think science should be complete, and it’s not,” says Dumitriu. “It’s far from it, in fact. We’re starting to know just how little we know, and what we now need to do to fill in the gaps in our understanding – and there are more gaps than not.”
She also hopes that her art will help scientists gain a deeper understanding of how the public might interpret their work.
“The idea with my art is that people get something from the first look, and then if they want to go deeper, they can,” she says. “I want people to be able to think and ask questions and have the tools to realise that some things you’re presented with by the media might not be exactly true.”
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Story by Kylie Ahern