Nina's Story (2019)

Archival Inkjet photographic prints, glass, 

cyanotype fabric, genetic engineered bacteria, chlorophyll ink


Nina’s Story is a project involving computer science, photography, and biology. I narrate the story of Nina, the only female Mexican Grey Wolf in the breeding program put in place to save the species. Nina for a long time was the only female wolf of the program, the living female body everyone looked upon with expectations; the Eve of her own species. Nina’s story is a story that talks of bodies, of generation, of loss, of exploitation.

The photographs are translated into the genetic material of living bacteria, an alchemical and symbolic act for regeneration. On average, a new generation of E. Coli are born and die in approximately 48 hours. The bacteria reached the 12th generation in the weeks of the exhibition; lifetimes spent with Nina’s Story, bringing back generation and variations to it.

Nothing has changed.

The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.

[…]
Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

[…] 

Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.


"Torture" by W. Szymborska

Using Format