“Infusoria: One Health and Antimicrobial Resistance” (2025) is a collaboration with Modernising Medical Microbiology that explores how issues like climate change, rain and wastewater management are implicated as drivers of antimicrobial resistance and how new technologies such as whole genome sequencing are used to identify and understand antimicrobial resistance. This body of artworks explores the nested microbial genetic and ecological systems that influence and entangle human, animal, and climate health through antimicrobial resistance via a “One Health” perspective.
In 1847 Ignaz Semmelweis proposed that ‘childbed fever’ infections could be drastically reduced by requiring doctors to wash their hands between patients, but his ideas were rejected by the medical community, who were upset at the suggestion that they could be responsible for spreading infections. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken and erratic Semmelweis was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards and died two weeks later from an infection from a wound on his hand. In 1861 Louis Pasteur’s “Germ Theory” verified Semmelweis’ ideas and they became widely accepted. The cognitive bias of science communities against accepting new ideas is now known as ‘the Semmelweis reflex’.
Nowadays it is common for hospital rooms to have multiple sinks, which whilst installed to promote handwashing, prevent infection and protect patients have also been shown to be linked with the transmission of some types of hospital-associated infection. Hospital sinks are not only used for handwashing, and it is hard to control what is thrown down the drains. Visitors might throw unfinished drinks down them; even antibiotics, foodstuffs, chemicals or patient waste might go down them. This might encourage the growth of different disease-causing bacteria or the spread of antibiotic resistance genes. The proliferation of sinks nowadays makes it hard to control how they are used. Patient, visitor and healthcare worker engagement in sink use and better design of sinks and hospital wastewater systems may cut down on the risk of contamination and the spread of antibiotic resistance and hospital-associated infection.
Antibiotic resistance genes can spread in bacteria that live in sink plumbing and cause ‘antibiotic resistance gene outbreaks’ in hospitals, where the same antibiotic resistance genes move between different species of bacteria on mobile elements called plasmids. These plasmids can spread antibiotic resistance genes rapidly between bacteria, giving rise to new strains that can cause difficult-to-treat infections.
Researchers from Modernising Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford have been studying antimicrobial resistance gene and pathogen burden in sinks in UK hospitals and associations with healthcare-associated infections, sink design and sink usage as part of the “SinkBug” project in collaboration with 29 hospital sites and public health teams.
Anna Dumitriu sampled all the sinks (the sink trap water) in her own home and went to the University of Oxford to work with her collaborators to grow the bacteria from different dilutions of her samples. Dumitriu always performs her own experiments hands-on. She grew the bacteria on silk using chromogenic agar in the presence of discs containing commonly used antibiotics for managing patient infections, alongside sterilising the bacteria and looking at them under the microscope, to inspire and make these new works.
Artworks
Clean Hands
In Clean Hands (2025) two handwash basins, typical of those used by doctors the 1840s when Ignaz Semmelweis proposed that ‘childbed fever’ infections could be drastically reduced by requiring doctors to wash their hands between patients, have been altered and hand-painted with images of the bacteria found in the sink traps sampled from the artist’s own residence.
The taps, spouts, and drains are 3D printed to represent the organic forms of the bacteria that live in the traps in residential and hospital sinks which can harbour bacteria and even spread antibiotic-resistant plasmids between species. The spout hangs directly over the drain in such a way that it has the possibility to splash bacteria up from the drain. Sink design is important for reducing the spread of bacteria but hospitals often have a huge range of designs which have been installed over many years with limited budgets to update infrastructure. The bowls have the capacity to be poured with a thin layer of DIY kitchen agar for the designed for the growth of non-pathogenic bacteria that could grow during the exhibition depending on the exhibition space.
Credit: Anna Dumitriu, in collaboration Professor Nicole Stoesser and Dr Kevin Chau, Modernising Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford
Materials: Altered antique hand washbasins, ceramic paint, 3D printed PLA, paint
Year: 2025
Infusoria
Infusoria (2025) references the famous caricature “Monster Soup” (1828) by William Heath where a woman in fashionable dress of the time looks into a microscope to view tiny ‘monsters’ swimming about in a drop of London Thames water and drops her fine teacup in horror. Here, Anna Dumitriu has altered an antique cup and saucer featuring a tranquil image of the River Thames with images of the bacteria found in the sink traps sampled from the artist’s own residence.
The cup can be displayed containing river water and mud in the bottom, to reference how Londoners would ‘purify’ their contaminated water by allowing the dirt to settle in the bottom of a cup and then pour off the clear liquid. The cup can also be poured with a thin layer of DIY kitchen agar for the designed for the growth of non-pathogenic bacteria that could grow during the exhibition depending on the exhibition space. Antique bottles and jars containing a range of river and seawater samples sealed with wax and labelled and a framed element containing microscope slides, bacteria grown silk, water test strips, and painting, are shown alongside.
Credit: Anna Dumitriu, in collaboration Professor Nicole Stoesser and Dr Kevin Chau, Modernising Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford
Materials: Altered antique cup and saucer, ceramic paint, Vintage bottles and jars with river and sea water (can be sealed). Framed work with silk and grown with bacteria on chromogenic agar, microscope slides, water test strips, acrylic, antibiotic disc
Year: 2025
Festival
This delicate and embroidered yet unsettling bunting is crafted from cloth grown with bacterial cultures, transforming a symbol of festivity into an ephemeral archive of microbial presence. Each flag bears the marks of bacteria, some of which are grown on chromogenic agar with antibiotic discs from bacteria that live in the sink traps in the artist’s home, and others from hospital sink trap samples in the University of Oxford’s SinkBug project. The collection has been grown on agar containing typical substances disposed of down hospital sinks, such as coffee, cola, and orange juice. The sagging bunting hangs in silent testimony to the gap between the aims of public understanding of science and the distortions of complex scientific concepts which can never fully align. The poetic nature of the portrayal of the issue asks if art and aesthetics can offer us a different kind of understanding and meaning.
Credit: Anna Dumitriu, in collaboration Professor Nicole Stoesser and Dr Kevin Chau, Modernising Medical Microbiology at the University of Oxford
Materials: Silk and grown with bacteria on chromogenic agar, cotton, embroidery
Year: 2025