Artist Emily Mulvaney takes the term “body of work” literally in her exhibition focused on the preservation and degradation of specimens, offering perfect fodder for the Halloween season.
Mulvaney was the Lance Williams Art and Science Artist-in-Residence and lecturer at KU when she first began ideating “Preservation of Bodies,” her debut solo show that was unveiled at Off-Site Art Space on Friday.
Mulvaney’s work asks if a preserved element can ever represent the totality of an object or moment. She considered the rigorous process of lab-based preservation, as well as domestic methods for her show.
“If you’re in a home setting, you know, we have all of these different ways of preserving, like vacuum-sealed bags or salt curing or jarring, and all of those spaces in between,” she said. “… And then there’s the idea of imagery and taking photos, and is that preserving a body in a moment as well?”
The two rooms of the exhibition are filled with bioplastics intentionally fuzzed over with mold, contained in vials and glass orbs. Aqua resin forms crawl along the walls, while other pieces present like synthetic organs pulled from a carcass.
In her journey to becoming a sculptural Frankenstein, Mulvaney dug through the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at KU and the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City. She examined early texts with medical and scientific illustrations, such as the 16th-century title “The Fabric of the Human Body (De Humani Corporis Fabrica)” by Andreas Vesalius. Wielding art and science in concert, Mulvaney’s macabre curiosity is evident.
“Both art and science are fields that can feel inaccessible in a lot of ways to a larger audience,” Mulvaney said. “So for me, bridging them together, it’s always really important to add this more humanistic element to it, to make it feel more human, and so ways that I’m doing this (are) playing with absurdity and humor.”
Against one window, the sun outlined vacuum-sealed bags full of violet splotches, hanging from industrial pipes like they’re a laundry line. In this piece, entitled “Of the Soil ; Quorum Sensing,” viewers witness a violet visual expression of bacterial communication that Mulvaney captured in collaboration with Eryk Yarkosky, a PhD student in a KU molecular biosciences lab.
Mulvaney faced ethical concerns about her work with living bacteria, and she soon shifted to using bioplastics to represent organic forms. Bioplastics are made without petroleum and biodegrade at a faster rate than standard plastic. She cooked the materials herself while reflecting on the objects she put in and took out of the world as an artist.
“There’s a really big shift that’s happening right now with artists who are using it (bioplastics), designers, fabricators, lots of people are making conscious efforts to utilize materials that actually break down before the end of the world,” she said.
One form, entitled “Infest at Rest ; Mother,” appears like a science fiction oddity. Mulvaney refers to this piece colloquially as “the mother,” since it contains the base sheet of bioplastic that was cut up for many of the vials throughout the space.
It beckons the viewer to approach and pay their respects — or perhaps to engage in a more gruesome manner. Mulvaney said that many viewers have wanted to drink from the mother’s body or other moldy vials.
“It’s so funny how that happens when you make something so seemingly repulsive, people just want to ingest it,” she said. “… Anytime I’ve made any work that really leans into that grotesque factor, I get the same reaction every time. ‘I want to touch it, I want to feel it, I want to engage with it.’ Which, I love that.”
For those who can’t keep their hands off the art, there’s a sensory touching station with bioplastics ranging from rigid to slimy, vacuum-seal bags, petri dishes and vials.
In the center of the first room of the exhibition, “Dualing Orbs” displays the only pieces of bioplastic still actively molding and mutating. The piece looks vastly different each day, demonstrating that even Mulvaney’s work, as it breaks down, captures a microcosm of a time and place in Off-Site Art Space.
“Preservation of Bodies” is on display at Off-Site Art Space, 924 Delaware St., through Oct. 25. The gallery is open from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.
A talk called “Bacterial Languages” is tentatively scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 21, at Off-Site. Josie Chandler, associate professor at KU and Yarkosky will discuss the significance of scientific research and their work with microbiology.
There will be a closing reception from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 25 with light brunch fare and and refreshments. Mulvaney will give an artist talk and community poet Megan Kaminski will give a reading.
Find more of Mulvaney’s work at emilymulvaney.com.
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