Bio-Artist Kathy High Exhibit

Because I am currently planning on entering a doctoral program in the Biomedical Engineering department next fall, I had a special interest in Kathy High’s exhibit; she decided to use the microbial environment of the body’s digestive system to convey her unusual ideas of art and nature and beauty.  The exhibit in CNSI therefore featured various self-portraits, art collages mixing the idea of children’s play grounds and digestive systems, as well as strange microbial samples.

One example of the strange microbial samples was in fact a sample of human feces suspended in honey, as seen below.

Despite the unappetizing nature of this piece, Kathy High’s ability to connect scientific inquiry and curiosity with art follows along the theme of the class.  She doesn’t showcase this literal piece of shit because she believes in the aesthetic, but rather because the idea of a whole microbial world that lives in our digestive system is somewhat beautiful.  I have often thought that the idea that there are 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells in the body a wonderful feature of nature (which is what the rawest of art is based on). 

Additionally, Kathy High’s eagerness to share this wonderful feature of the human body and the ecological system with the public through this art can be shown through her collages.  

They feature a well understood concept, happy children, with the slightly more daunting large intestines.  How I interpreted this was that she wanted everyone to understand the comfort and importance of the microbial systems in our body to our happiness; while Kathy High’s methods are slightly convoluted, I believe that her art contains some of the most overarching themes of the course (i.e. that science and art are one in the same and need eachother to spread important concepts to the public).