Viral Life

Luís Graça and Marta de Menezes: Adaptive responses

Prof. Luis Graca has an MD from the University of Lisbon, Portugal; and a PhD in transplant immunology from the University of Oxford, UK. He developed his post-doctoral research first in Oxford and later at the Institute for Child Health Research, in Perth, Australia. He is currently Professor of Immunology at the University of Lisbon Medical School, directing a research group in Cellular Immunology at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular.

His most significant scientific contributions have been related with the field of transplantation and autoimmunity. Graca has worked on strategies to overcome transplant rejection, as well as in the induction of immune tolerance in autoimmunity and allergy. Among these topics he has been especially interested in the biology of different types of regulatory T cells, namely T follicular regulatory cells – a cell type he co-discovered.

Graca has collaborated with several artists, including a long-term relationship with Marta de Menezes (www.martademenezes.com), a pioneer in the field of bioart and possibly the artist with the most diverse approach within this field. Artworks developed by different artists in collaboration with the Graca Laboratory have been exhibited worldwide.

Graca is President of the Sociedade das Ciências Médicas de Lisboa, the oldest medical society in Europe (founded 1822) and past-president of the Portuguese Society for Immunology.

Affiliation: Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina; Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. 

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Publications 

Anna Dumitriu: Art and the Impact of Infectious Disease 

Anna Dumitriu is a British artist who works with BioArt, sculpture, installation, and digital media to explore our relationship to infectious diseases, synthetic biology, and robotics. Past exhibitions include ZKM, Ars Electronica, BOZAR, The Picasso Museum, HeK Basel, Science Gallery Detroit, MOCA Taipei, LABoral, Art Laboratory Berlin, and Eden Project. She holds visiting research fellowships at the University of Hertfordshire, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Waag Society, as well as artist-in-residence roles with the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at the University of Oxford, and with the National Collection of Type Cultures at Public Health England. She was the 2018 President of the Science and the Arts Section of the British Science Association. Her work has featured in many significant publications including Frieze, Artforum International Magazine, Leonardo Journal, The Art Newspaper, Nature and The Lancet. Current collaborations include the Institute of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology at BOKU – Universität für Bodenkultur in Vienna, the EU H2020 CHIC Consortium, the University of Leeds and the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells at HelmholtzZentrum in München. 

Anna Dumitriu will discuss the ideas and processes behind her artworks which explore infectious diseases, synthetic biology and genomics, and well as robotics, artificial intelligence and emerging digital technologies. Equally at home in bioscience and technology settings as the art studio, Dumitriu will discuss key past works including her “Plague Dress”, embedded with real plague DNA and artworks involving CRISPR genetic modification and antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, she will give an insight into new artworks created in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, including “Susceptible” which focusses on new innovations in global health and tuberculosis genomics, “Shielding” which looks at the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on victims of domestic abuse and is embedded with a SARS-CoV-2 RNA construct, and “Cyberspecies Proximity” a robotic artwork exploring how we will share future cities with intelligent robots. Her work is frequently inspired by the history behind research, situating contemporary issues within cultural contexts, weaving narratives and telling stories and drawing threads across time. She is currently developing new work around the “Collateral Effects” of the pandemic. 

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Heather Dewey-Hagborg: Lovesick: Biotechnology and Intimacy 

Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (hair, cigarette butts, chewed up gum) collected in public places. 

Heather has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, Transmediale and PS1 MOMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wellcome Collection, the Exploratorium, and the New York Historical Society, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired.  

Heather has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a visiting assistant professor of Interactive Media at NYU Abu Dhabi, an artist fellow at AI Now, an Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium, and is an affiliate of Data & Society. 

She is also a co-founder and co-curator of REFRESH, an inclusive and politically engaged collaborative platform at the intersection of Art, Science, and Technology. 

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