BA+DA launched in 2023 with the completion of its microbiology laboratory dedicated to the production of bio-art and -design, and an accompanying curated group exhibition that explored the political implications of artworks made with microbial forms. Since then, BA+DA’s specialist focus on microbial ecologies has expanded to include six additional focus areas: Precarious and reparative ecologies; Botanical ecologies; Biomedical ecologies; Material ecologies, Queer ecologies and Afrofuturist ecologies. The work on Imminent and Eminent Ecologies spans these focus areas in an attempt to raise public awareness of urgent environmental and political issues. In so doing, audiences are invited to reimagine our current and future ecologies from decolonial, Africanised perspectives.

The artworks on show foreground the entanglement between living and non/living forms, humans and the more-than-human, and the effect culture has on climate change. The exhibition advocates that holistic decolonial practice can only be manifest through breaking down the artificial boundaries between species, and between the organic and elemental. An important outcome of this is the emergence of a new kind of trans-species democracy composed of multiple materialities − a democracy whose constitution is premised on what theorist and physicist Karen Barad terms ‘intra-actions’ based on empathy, care and respect.