AUDREY RANGEL AGUIRRE

EXTREMOPHILE

Extremophile is a speculative microorganism that originated on Earth but will be developing in another planets, after transplanetary missions to outer space by human race.

The process of making this artwork started as an image of soil seen under the microscope and then manipulated in order to create digital images. Conceptually it has its origins on soil and then it was brought into the digital world on the process of developing the photographs taken with the aid of a microscope. The concept is the continuity of life on earth in another planets, a microorganism that cooperates with its new habitat and feeds from it, and at the same time the idea of organic matter like soil being transformed and brought into the digital world. The work also explores resilience as a characteristic of extremophiles that can adapt and live under extreme conditions like dangerous weather or radiation, this resilience is explored as a philosophical approach to life under extreme conditions by humanity and microorganisms. Resilience is explored as a characteristic that microorganisms and humans share and a point of interconnectedness between them.

These digital images are part of a body of work that has been developed as the outcomes of the ongoing collaboration between the artist and astrobiologist Dr Marta Filipa Simões, a researcher at State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Macau University of Science and Technology, China. Their collaborative work explores Dr Simões‘s current scientific research on metal nanoparticles and the emergent field of Astromycology. The collaboration has originated exciting and interesting projects as the creation of speculative materials developed with nanoparticles and fungal resources, as well as photographic documentation, texts, experiments, digital images and has bridged the artist’s current project Terras Lux with notions of astrobiology and situate the project into a vision that connects the microscopic dimension of microorganisms on earth with the macrocosm that is the vast universe and space.

BIOGRAPHY

Audrey Rangel Aguirre is an interdisciplinary Mexican artist based in England who holds a BA Fine Arts from the Accademia Di Belle Arti di Firenze (Florence, Italy) with a focus on sculpture and an MA Art & Science from Central St Martins, London. Her practice focuses on the use of artistic intuition to develop further scientific research, paving the way to the acknowledgement of new systems that belong to the future of human civilization.