ALEXANDRA KNIE

SMALL SPATIAL MODEL OF SPACE VIRUSES AND THEIR MUTATIONS (2019-2020)

Exhibited at the Museum August Macke Haus in Bonn (Germany), 2020, at the exhibition “With Stitch and Thread - Expressionist and Contemporary Art Juxtaposed“

My installation creates a walk-through model of a universe that simultaneously represents a laboratory situation. Based on a specific astrobiological assumption that viruses could also exist in space, I have designed serial scenarios of extraterrestrial viruses. My machine-embroidered models of space viruses and their mutations are based on electron microscope images of viruses such as Ebola virus, poliovirus and the coronavirus on Earth, for example, and combine reality and fiction in a free manner. Plexiglas tubes are reminiscent of petri dishes and virus structures gather in test tubes.

My artistic investigation focuses on the intersection of art, craft and science. In particular, I concentrate on scientific illustrations, terms and methods as they are applied in microbiology and astronomy or astrobiology, to create metaphorical visions of them through cross-disciplinary artistic transformations that are put into multiple layers beyond an empirical logic.

The transfer of microscopic and macroscopic visualized images into a hand or machine embroidery, sometimes merged with painting, links two divergent areas: modern science and a historical textile technique. By using textile materials as a carrier material as well as hand and machine embroideries, I am looking for infusing my artworks with tactile and sensory qualities, extending the purely visual in order to create models that provide access to scientific intellectual content. Simultaneously these examine the social, cultural and ethical questions raised by artistic practices that engage with scientific themes and cultural connotations. By means of an ongoing artistic-experimental laboratory, which simulates and analyses the different connections between the inner world and the phenomena of the universe, I try to create new contexts of perception in art and science, building a kind of knowledge space. My work is mostly inspired by artists like Nancy Graves, Anni Albers, Ernesto Neto, José María Sicilia and Laura Splan.