La Kunsthalle Mulhouse hosts Alchimia Nova, an exhibition by Belgian artist Anne Marie Maes, from February 17 to April 30, 2023.

For more than 15 years, the artist has been taking a non-anthropocentric look at the world, focusing her research on the symbiotic relationship between all living microorganisms, including plants, bacteria and fungi.

For her project in Mulhouse, Maes continues her investigations during a research residency on microorganisms as a medium of creation, and she is particularly interested in what the Alsatian soils have to offer her for the creation of new works in collaboration with a team of microbiologists from the CNRS—University of Strasbourg. After several harvests, Maes elaborates a palette of colors characteristic of the region using pigments obtained from the extraction or decoction of wild plants, mushrooms and bacteria from the soil.

At the heart of the exhibition will be the Lab for Form & Matter, a work in the form of a combined laboratory and artist’s workshop and the center of the artist’s interactions with scientists and the public. This research space will be set in motion by the artist at key moments when she will invite the public to participate in her project.

Alchimia Nova is a living, evolving exhibition composed of new experiments and existing works, all inspired by the rhythm, energy, beauty and inventiveness of nature.

A proposal by Sandrine Wymann.

Anne Marie Maes is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brussels. Her practice combines art and science, with a particular interest in biotechnology, ecosystems and alchemical processes, and she works with a range of biological, digital and traditional media, including living organisms. On the roof of her studio in Brussels, she has created an outdoor laboratory and experimental garden where she studies symbiotic organisms and the processes nature uses to create form. Her long-term projects “Bee Agency” and “Laboratory for Form and Matter”, in which she experiments with bacteria and living textiles, provide a framework that has inspired a wide range of installations, sculptures, photographs, objects and performances, all at the intersection of art and ecology.

Anne Marie Maes has exhibited her work at art centers and festivals around the world. She received an honorable mention at Ars Electronica for her ongoing research project, « The Intelligent Guerrilla Beehive. »

The contemporary Art Funds [N.A !] Project is a partner of the project.
The exhibition Alchimia Nova is supported by Flanders State of the Art and Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris.

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