Bio-assay

Dimensions variable

Agar-agar and or silicone, FCF brilliant blue, water, urine. Each piece contains a specific chemical: Ayahuasca, Peyote, Yopo and other organic or laboratory-synthesized substances

2018 – ongoing

Through indigenous’ cosmogony knowledge with a scientific-ethnographic-technical approach, I alter my molecular structure and then cast my urine in Victorian copper jelly-moulds. An “edible” object that references the nature-culture political and economy discourse.

For this piece, I take perception-enhancing plant-chemicals used by indigenous tribes from the Americas for medicine and rituals. These pharmacons and their composition have been the subject of scientific/ethnographic and photographic expeditions since the nineteenth century. Nowadays, objected to genetic information extraction, laboratory synthetization (contemporary bio-piracy), and advanced-capitalism marketisation. Thus, predatory consumption and destruction.

I had been systematically altering the colour of my urine for some time through the intake of vitamins and other substances. While researching on the blue coating of determined pharmacology products such as Viagra, some types of hormones and specific psychiatric prescription drugs, I learned about FCF Brilliant Blue. This (sometimes toxic) compound is used to test the level of certain chemicals in the public water system. Therefore, I add different amounts of the powder “proportional” to the quantity of the molecular-chemistry-hacking agent in my body.

Victorian copper jelly moulds are indexes of wealth, power, and British imperial colonialism. During this era, the first industrial revolution emerged, and the scientific-regulatory-cultural discourse was taking shape. I started searching and acquiring original moulds for this project at flea-markets, antique shops and online while living in London. As I moved to Colombia for a period of time, I started making the moulds out of photographic archives. These duplicates simulate the action of copying European masterpieces that criollo/creole artists used to paint and sculpt during colonial times. Each model’s origin differentiate and situate the action as well as the type of native plants/fungi or synthesized chemicals that enter my body for each assay.