Event 2

Event 2: “Vivarium: A Place of Life”

This week, I went to Maru Garcia’s “Vivarium: A Place of Life” exhibit at the CNSI gallery. This was located on South Campus here at UCLA. This event was really intriguing to me because it showed a combination of art and nature, which is something that I have not seen much of. Further, it was unique because this type of art serves a larger purpose: the development of our knowledge of the ecosystem that we live in each day. Maru Garcia is an artist from Mexico that mainly focuses on things such as this exhibit, as she intends to “capture, understand, and express the relationship and interaction between humans and Nature” (VIVARIUM website).

Selfie of myself inside of the exhibit. It was cool to be so close!

Selfie of me on the outside of the exhibit looking in

As a matter of fact, the exhibit happens to tie in perfectly to our topic in class this week, BioArt. BioArt is essentially biology in art. “BioArt is an art practice where humans work with live tissues, bacteria, living organisms, and life processes” (BioArt Wikipedia). However, there is much more to it than that. In her lecture, Professor Vesna says that this is one of the most controversial topics that we cover because it creates hybrids between species and deals with a lot of lab work (Vesna). No matter how controversial it may be, it is certain that there are many pros that come out of it. Many artists have started moving their work into labs in order to work hands on with cells and things of the like to gather knowledge to help the environment. This is a large part of what we see in Maru Garcia’s exhibit.

All in all, I found it refreshing that Maru Garcia was able to create a piece of art that dealt so heavily with the environment. I had never really experienced BioArt in person, so this was unique. I think that seeing this event continues to go along with the overarching theme of the class, which is that art can be a useful tool in so many different fields of life. If Maru Garcia can continue to produce work like this, and people have access to experiencing it themselves, they can all learn from it and things like climate change could be a thing of the past.

Selfie in front of projections showing a closer look

Works Cited

“VIVARIUM: A PLACE OF LIFE.” COLLECTIVE BREAD DIARIES: A TASTE OF PROTEST | UCLA Art | Sci Center + Lab, 1 Jan. 1970, artsci.ucla.edu/node/1389.

“BioArt.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 May 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioArt.

Vesna, Victoria. “Biotech Intro NEW.” YouTube, YouTube, 26 Mar. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvp924_pbgc&feature=youtu.be.