The Reason We All Come From a Womb (2019)
Cyanotype fabric, glass, wax, feathers, video projection
The Reason We All Come From a Womb is an installation composed of various elements, including sculpture and projection. It is a work about genetic contamination.
DNA is a space where cross contamination can happen, where species share information, where hybridization allows new mechanisms to be created, and where kin becomes a molecular similitude.
8% of the human genome comes from other species, mostly retro viruses – bacteria that copy part of their genome in to the host’s. Syncytin-1, the key protein that is at the center of the fetus/mother placenta relation in most primates, was one of those genes. 25 million years ago, one of our ancestors was infected by a retrovirus. It left this short gene in the host genome that produces the protein essential for chemical exchanges in the placenta.
This is the reason we all come from a womb, nurtured via our mother’s body.
The protein atomic structure is retraced and becomes a starry night, hovering on the celling of the gallery, above the other works and the human bodies in the space: the bodies become moving screens and filter for the light. In the slow-moving projection, the protein structure is put in relation with the constellation of Virgo. The stars composing the constellation were originally identified as the Great Goddess in many ancient cultures, the female figure of fertility.
