Tarsh Bates working on 'Surface dynamics of adhesion' for our next exhibition

The artist's own blood is sued to make the blood agar

Tarsh Bates artistically explores what it means to be human when we recognise our bodies as composed of over one trillion cells, of which only around half are human. Her new work Surface dynamics of adhesion is a flocked wallpaper sampler. Encased in acrylic boxes, living Candida, with blood from Bates herself, form patterns from wallpaper popular in the parlours of Victorian Britain. The work offers aesthetic experiences from the contact zones between the two different organisms, and highlights the unconscious relation we have with Candida.

Here are some images of Tarsh working on making blood agar at the laboratory of the DHZB Center for Biofilms and Infection in Berlin.

Tarsh Bates working in the laboratory

The blood agar is poured into acrylic boxes

All images by Ben Warner for Art Laboratory Berlin

More information on our upcoming exhibition The Other Selves, On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome, opening on 26 February here: http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-archive.htm