Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr

Well-known bioartists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (The Tissue Culture & Art Project) present their landmark work ‘Pig Wings’ (2000). Advances in tissue engineering, xenotransplantation and genomics promise to render the living body as a malleable mass. Questioning the effect of these powerful technologies on the body and society, Pig Wings presents the first ever wing shaped objects grown using living pig tissue.

Pig Wings was developed at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School and SymbioticA Laboratory at the University of Western Australia.

Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Tarsh Bates 

Following a residency at the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh, Oron and Ionat, joined by Tarsh Bates, will present a work in progress exhibition, ‘Crossing Kingdoms’, poetically exploring the products of cross-kingdom cell fusion in synthetic biology. The work raises questions, through actual manipulation of life forms, about the practical and ontological nature and identity of novel organisms that fall outside scientific and cultural classification systems. In what ways do multi-kingdom cell fusions challenge our categories and understandings of life? How can they be taxonomised? What are the impacts on the

envrionment and society? Crossing Kingdoms reflectively dwell into traversing tangible and conceptual borders of life and living systems.

In collaboration with the Cachat Lab (UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology, University of Edinburgh) and the Jamie Davies Lab (Deanery of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh). Supported by the Research Collaboration Award from the University of Western Australia.