Life as art and art as life
Reflections on seven exemplary bioartistic works
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/re.17.2025.20057Keywords:
Bird art, Bioart, leporides, transgenic art, transhumanismAbstract
Bioart is contributing to the contemporary art with a different gaze, new media, and profound reflections on the artistic work and on life. Although there is a lot of literature written on the topic there is a lack of efforts to adequately connect bioartists with Art History, and to deepen the connections between their artistic work and the concept of life, between their artistic practice and biology. The present article aims to make an approach to the reflections around life as art and art as life through a careful selection of 7 ‘exemplary’ bioartistic cases, contextualizing them as follows: First, the most popular bioart work is placed in continuity connection with two landmark works from two distinct moments in the history of art separated in time by more than 400 years; second, three works in which the bodies of the bioartists themselves were intervened on are placed in dialogue with the body art movement; and finally, three works by and pioneers of bioart are linked with the discourse of a recent installation by an emerging artist.
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