KEHAMATERJAL (2009)

SInce I was a child I felt strong attraction to biology. This developed than I studied profoundly botany, microbiology and embryology in high school. The logic, lively and abstract nature of biological processes form photo series and installation KEHAMATERJAL (Body Material). This is a series of four-part portraits of people living in different places: two parts are usual - a face picture of a person and a picture of a room where this person lives/ works. The other two are fungi that have been growing on biological substrate out of material collected from a body of this person or from air in this room. I asked people to put a part of their bodies – saliva, hair, sperm, mucus, perspiration, nails, hand dirt – in a Petri cup filed with prepared biological substrate. The cup was then closed and left to "ripe" for some 7-10 days in the place where it was collected, after 7-10 days I photographed it. The other cup with biological substrate was left open in the room for half an hour and then closed and left to ripe. Half an hour is enough for spores present in the air to land onto the cup and start growing.

The process looks seriously scientific and accurate. When looking at the photos people start finding similarities between fungi and portraits, become interested in what fungi species have grown from this person and why. In reality no clear explanation can be given to this. The connection between fungi and a person certainly is there but all the similarities and explanation people find are purely psychological, semiotical and fictional.

I have also made an installation ELUKIOSK (Life Kiosk) to couple KEHAMATERJAL on exhibitions. There Petri cups with substrate are really present on exhibition with body material from exhibition guests collected on exhibition opening - together with "donors'" portraits on the wall.

Download press-release (in Estonian)

Press:
Cheese #34. 2009, Indrek Grigor. Sveta Bogomolova „Koleoome” Eesti kaasaegse kunsti analüütilise paradigma
Puhkepäev, 21.05.2010, Ragne Nukk. Jõud ülikoolilinnast

Thanks:
Eesti Kultuurkapital
Nodar Artist Residency
Tartu Kultuurkapital

Photos:
Sveta Bogomolova

Photos of the collecting process:
Vahram Muradyan
Luis Costa