For more than 15 years, the artist Anne Marie Maes has been taking a non-anthropocentric look at the world, focusing her research on the symbiotic relationship between all living micro-organisms, including plants, bacteria and fungi.
For her project in Mulhouse, Maes continues her investigations during a research residency on micro-organisms 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.
Curator: Sandrine Wymann