“We are humus, not Homo, not anthropos; we are compost, not posthuman.”
— Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
Dr. Michael Bianco is an artist, curator, and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice moves between art, science, and material inquiry. His practice is driven by curiosity about the seemingly infinite complexity of things and the systems in which they are entangled. Working primarily with earth and biological matter, as well as the synthetic residues of human activity, Bianco stages encounters with objects and materials as points of shared exploration and understanding.
Research operates within his practice as a process of demystification, tracing things and phenomena through ecological, geological, social, and industrial systems. The data extracted becomes the basis for more poetic encounters that reveal the complexity within seemingly banal things. Bianco approaches exhibitions, performances, and installations as spaces of (re)-presentation, using their syntax to shape encounters with things and make our relationships to them perceptible.
Underlying this work is an ongoing engagement with ecological and social crises. Rather than resolving their contradictions or prescribing solutions, Bianco creates space for their complexities to coexist: tenderness and violence, intimacy and vastness, wonder and dread. His work asks what happens when we attend closely to a thing and discover that it is never simply itself, but a fragment of systems in which we, too, are implicated.
Bianco has conducted research at the intersection of art, ecology, food, craft, and sustainability in locations ranging from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Fukushima, Japan. His work has been presented internationally, including at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the Kenpoku Art Festival in Ibaraki, Japan, and Science Gallery London. He holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Alfred University, an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, an MFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, and a PhD from the University of Western Australia
EDUCATION
PhD - Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, 2022
MFA - Art & Design, University of Michigan, 2015
MA - Curatorial Practice, California College of the Arts, 2007
BA - Interdisciplinary Arts, Alfred University, 2004