Margo Trushina

In her work, Margo Trushina explores the intersection of bioart and new feminist materialist ethics. Her living sculptures and environments reflect upon recent discoveries in neuroscience, biotechnology and ecology through the lens of personal bodily experiences.

In tune with speculative ethics of care, Trushina pursues direct interspecies relationships as her way to address current environmental challenges;- rising sea-levels , species extinction, outbreaks of zoonotic diseases and pathologic gene mutations. The artist offers a subjective material vision of these problems by creating fragile environments by tying together substances that come from different natures ;- such as steel and neon with corals and breast milk. Her fictional environments and sculptures reflect habitats and bodies affected by climate change that are still breathing, therefore calling for an ethical response.

Engaging with the diversity of agents entangled and intertwined with each other and their surroundings, she makes visible a variety of transcorporeal imprints in the bodies of others — humans and other animals, plants, water, light, soil, stones and fossils. To this purpose, she creates situations of intensive proximity to the other, allowing viewers to experience the transformative potential of actual and imagined touch (haptic visuality). In the artist’s view, such interactions actualise our almost neglected communication trajectories and promise to inspire new forms of perception, similar to what Laura U. Marks calls empathic nonunderstanding.