"Culture of Contamination"
a SciArt Initiative exhibition at the New York Hall of Science
a SciArt Initiative exhibition at the New York Hall of Science
The notion of contamination permeates many aspects of life; while contamination literally describes a biological impurity, it also metaphorically embodies the relentless threshold of “otherness.” Ultimately, contamination is the trespassing of inside and out, a mixing of what supposedly belongs and what decidedly doesn’t. Our basic reality is characterized by a construct of separateness and the vital comfort of the contained self.
Our bodies, our ideas, and the environment are not only vulnerable to contamination, but shaped by the very concept of it. Even the words we speak out loud seep back into our understanding of their meaning. Declaring “rhetoric itself as parasitic or viral,” Jacques Derrida states that metaphors are “the logic of contamination and the contamination of logic.”
From plastic polluted seas to unwelcome weeds, to the outbreak of infectious diseases and viral memes, the threat of unwanted exposure lurks high and low. How do we frame these invasions of boundaries and risks of ruin? What does it mean to spread, to spoil?
Our bodies, our ideas, and the environment are not only vulnerable to contamination, but shaped by the very concept of it. Even the words we speak out loud seep back into our understanding of their meaning. Declaring “rhetoric itself as parasitic or viral,” Jacques Derrida states that metaphors are “the logic of contamination and the contamination of logic.”
From plastic polluted seas to unwelcome weeds, to the outbreak of infectious diseases and viral memes, the threat of unwanted exposure lurks high and low. How do we frame these invasions of boundaries and risks of ruin? What does it mean to spread, to spoil?
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About the Curator
Tarah Rhoda is an artist and educator based in NYC, where she runs the School of Visual Art’s BioArt Lab, a BSL-1 laboratory that provides artists with the tools of biotechnology and fosters creative applications. Through investigations of the body as a miniature world, her art practice yanks at the sense of self in nature’s reflection. Her recent work employs the physical principle of wetness as a metaphor for empathy, social permeability, and eco-connectivity. She received her BFA (2010) and MFA (2020) from SVA and also studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Denver, Detroit, Toronto, Mexico City, Lisbon, Berlin, Eindhoven and featured in National Geographic, the Guardian, and CBSNews. |
