Anna Dumitriu Blog

27th January 2020

“Rest, Rest, Rest!” (2014) takes the form of a tiny altered antique toy hospital bed and screen which are impregnated with the extracted tuberculosis (TB) DNA and dyed with natural dyes, which were historically used as treatments for the disease. It is part of Anna Dumitriu’s Romantic Disease series. Until the discovery of the antibiotic […]

27th January 2020

“The Consultation” (2014) reflects on the hopes of patients in their treatments at the very start of the antibiotic age and the increasing contemporary challenge of antibiotic resistance. These altered doll-sized modernist chairs and table have been stained orange with Prontosil, a sulfa medicine created in 1932 and based on Dr Paul Ehrlich’s concept of […]

2nd March 2020

“Algologies” explores the entangled relationships between seaweed, women and science. The project draws links between Victorian seaweed collectors, the use of seaweed-based agar jelly in contemporary biology, and seaweed growth as a barometer of climate change and the environment as well as a strategy for carbon capture.  The work fuses botanical printing techniques, DIY microbiology/biohacking […]

25th January 2020

As part of “Laboratory Life”, a project curated by The Arts Catalyst, Lighthouse and Andy Gracie, Anna Dumitriu led a group of artists, doctors and scientists to create “Infective Textiles” (2011) a textile-based artwork taking the form of a Regency style dress stained with bacterial pigments and patterned by antibiotics. This was her first major […]

24th January 2020

Anna Dumitriu’s “Normal Flora” project began in 2004 as a pioneering artistic project created in collaboration with microbiologist Professor John Paul. It significantly pre-dates contemporary popular research into what has become known as “the microbiome”, a field made possible through developments in new technologies in genomics. When the project began this area of microbiological study […]

4th February 2020

This project is artistically explored the “Collateral Effects” of the pandemic on science and society through the creation of a body of art works stemming from in-depth collaborations with researchers from leading scientific organisations across England. The immediate impacts of the pandemic are clear but there are already many unforeseen collateral effects on science as […]