Prof Leora Farber
Leora Farber is a Johannesburg-based artist, academic, writer, curator and editor, with an extensive exhibitions and publications history. She holds a BA Fine Art (University of the Witwatersrand, 1985); MA Fine Art (Cum Laude) (University of the Witwatersrand, 1992) and DPhil Visual Art (Creative Production) (University of Pretoria, 2013). She is an Associate Professor and Director of the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. Farber’s work has been exhibited in all of South Africa’s major public museums; she has presented solo exhibitions in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Perth; and has participated on group shows in London, New York, Taipei, Latvia and Atlanta. Her work is represented in numerous South African collections, including the Sanlam Corporate Collection; Unisa University Collection, the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Tatham Art Gallery collections. Farber has received multiple grants from funding bodies such as the South African National Research Foundation, The Ernest Oppenheimer Trust and the South African National Arts Council.
Artist Statement
In my creative praxis, I engage critically, theoretically, and affectively with ‘bioart’. Bioart involves practices that deal with hands-on application of biotechnologies in an artmaking context. Over the past seven years, I have made ‘impressions’ of domestic objects using non/living matter as material and medium. Some impressions are made from a cellulose-fibre produced by the symbiotic action of bacteria and yeast. This culture, which feeds off a mixture of tea and sugar, forms a cellulose fibre at the interface between the liquid and air. When dehydrated, the it bears an uncanny resemblance to traces of human skin. Other impressions are made from bacterial agar, onto which live, pathogenic bacteria are painted. The bacteria grow unpredictably in response to the designs that I create. In both instances, rather than being the product of my efforts alone, the work is made through collaboration between the micro-organisms and myself; they happen ‘with’ the agencies of the microbes in a dynamic process of creative exchange.
On SYM | BIO| ART
This extensive body of prints – from my project cultured colonies/colonial cultures, and of which only selected examples feature in this exhibition – are photographs of domestic objects that have been cast in agar, and painted onto, or infused with, live pathogenic bacteria. The casts (or ‘impressions’ of the objects) appear to be made of layers of exposed subcutaneous tissue. Devoid of the protective epidermis, they are materially corporeal yet eerie and spectral. Ethereal and ephemeral, they may act as affective carriers of memory, evoking associations with trauma, absence, and loss. Given the English and Dutch styles of china and patterning that they reference, these affective qualities may be associated with the legacy (and demise) of settler colonialism in South African history. The impressions carry hauntological resonances of British and Dutch Imperialism and colonialism – the very mechanisms that drove the enculturation of capital, set against against an historical backdrop of slavery, dispossession, apartheid, exploitation, displacement and precarity. The ‘casts-as-cultivated-cultures’ may thus be seen as uncanny spectres of disquietude that continue to inhabit the present.
In Order of Appearance:
Leora Farber, From the series cultured colonies/colonial cultures (2020-2023), Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Chromobacter violceum on nutrient agar; Digital print on Ilford smooth cotton 300gsm; Dibond; 210 x 91.5cm; Ed. 5
Leora Farber, From the series cultured colonies/colonial cultures (2020-2023), Chromobacter marcesens 1377 and Citrobacter on nutrient agar; Digital print on Ilford smooth cotton 300gsm; Dibond; 185.6 x 91.5cm; Ed. 5
Leora Farber, From the series cultured colonies/colonial cultures (2020-2023), Serratia marcescens 1337, Serratia marcescens 8476 and Klebsiella on chrome agar; Digital print on Ilford smooth cotton 300gsm; Dibond; 137 x 91.5cm (three items); Ed. 5
Leora Farber, From the series cultured colonies/colonial cultures (2020-2023), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Elizabethkiingia and E.coli on nutrient agar; Digital print on Ilford smooth cotton 300gsm; Dibond; 134 x 91.5 cm; Ed. 5
