Phantom Limb

Year: 2022
Exhibitions: Darwin’s Paradox: A Decade of Bio Art, NYC (2022)
Ghost Ecologies: Hidden Kinships, NYC (2022)
Media: Projection, Touch Designer, Time lapse photography, Physarum (slime mold)

Phantom Limb explores themes of immigration, and its effects on the sense of home, belonging and identity. For an immigrant, the word “home” holds a multitude of meanings, some harbor complex and contradicting emotions. It is punctuated by excitement of new opportunities, fragility of new beginnings and longing for the comfort of familiar. Home is a collective noun that represents a quilt of ones life journey, and memories. It is etched in our nervous system - viscerally felt, yet elusive as a destination. Conceived during the onset of Russian war in Ukraine, Phantom Limb became a visual essay that explored how the sense of home is shaped by external events and political conflict as much as internal state of a person.

Here slime mold became a metaphors for intelligence, tenacity and resilience. If you don’t know much about the slime mold, it’s a single cell organism that is incredibly efficient at figuring out sophisticated problems and surviving adverse conditions. Phantom Limb draws a parallel between extraordinary determination of the slime mold and a will of an immigrant who often had to survive and flee some form of political, economical, or natural distraction, to rebuild anew, to reconfigure one’s whole live, identity to find a way to thrive.

Photo description: Slime mold display on the time lapse rig next to the projection.

Photo description: An inverted map of Ukraine as a "petri dish" covered in slime mold. The oats, which is a source of nutrients for the slime mold, are then placed in the location of the most active and devastating areas of conflict.

A time lapse video was set up to observe slime mold growth in real time. The oat were encircled by growth inhibitors such as cinnamon or hydrogen peroxide. Overtime, one could observe the slime mold traverse the petri dish overcoming the inhibitors and reclaiming its space.

The growth of the slime mold is then translated into real time computer graphics algorithm. It’s a collection of found images of landscapes and Russian flora was used to embody memories of home. Every flower used is deeply symbolic in Russian culture and folklore. These images then were converted into particles and manipulated and distorted based on the growth. Through these observations, slime mold becomes an engine in maintaining and reconfiguring the fleeting memories of home, allowing some parts to die off and some parts to come back to life with new force.