Tatiana Istomina: The Lives of Flies November 1 - 30th, 2024
Tatiana Istomina: The Life of Flies
November 1 - 30th, 2024
First Friday Opening Reception, Friday, November 1st, 6-9 pm
Tatiana Istomina’s new project “The lives of flies” focuses on the common fruit fly, Drosophila Melanogaster. Fruit flies are widespread in nature, thriving on decaying flowers and fruit. Multitudes however, live in biological laboratories and drosophila stock centers, surviving under artificial conditions for thousands of generations. Cheap, easy to maintain, and harmless to humans and animals, drosophila has been the staple of biomedical research for over a hundred years. It is used as a proxy for humans in the study of diseases, mental disorders, aging, etc. Conveniently, flies are exempt from ethical protocols required by animal research: from science’s point of view, drosophila is a perfect biological instrument, neither entirely mechanical, nor fully alive. Istomina’s project explores the power dynamic inherent in human’s relationship with flies, which shapes the individual lives and the collective fate of laboratory-bred drosophila. It makes a case for the similarities between humans and flies extending beyond our common biology, to the tensions and drama of the human condition and our relationship with power.
At the center of the exhibition is a bioart installation, which includes tens of thousands of laboratory-bred fruit flies and larvae, encased in a set of plastic and glass vials. Over the course of the exhibition, the flies (belonging to two varieties: the wild-type, and the genetically mutated wingless type) multiply and migrate from their original vials into previously unoccupied containers via transparent plastic tubing. The installation thus functions as a bio-machine, “pumping” living organisms through the closed system of vessels and capillaries. Accompanying the fly installation are hand-made embroideries and silkscreens drawing on multiple sources, such as biomedical research involving drosophilas, the history of computers and automata, Pavlov’s dog experiments, and imagery from historical and present-day Russia portraying humans as cogs in a colossal social machine. Combined into 2d and 3d assemblages, the images explore the gray zone between consciousness and programmable reflexes, living tissue and hardware.
Artists BIO
Istomina is a multi-media artist working with painting, sculpture, film and text. Her art practice is informed by double relocation: from Russia to the US, and from research in physics to contemporary art. The central question in her work is the condition of knowledge and the variable concepts of truth. Istomina’s project “The lives of flies” has become possible thanks to the generous support from Coalesce: Center for Biological arts (University at Buffalo, NY), Prospect Art (Los Angeles, CA) and the Puffin foundation.
