Enlighten Immunology

This project included the production of a variety of work, including sculptures, Me and You, a large-scale video installation, The Gatekeeper, and a series of 'lymph system' watercolours made in 2017.

Work was made with advice from ten immune based science labs across Europe, constituting the Enlight-Ten research project which tries to understand our immune system better by looking at the functioning of specific white blood cells, called T cells by cross-disciplinary research using big data analysis.

The work was included in the exhibition Art Enlightening Immunology at the Waag, Amsterdam, in 2018, in the Waag's Theatrum Anatomicum, which included further artworks by the artists Marta de Menezes, Herwig Turk and the scientist Luis Graca.

Enlighten Blog

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The Gatekeeper explores the body's constant checking of it's own cells, as being 'self' or 'non-self', a process that happens in the lymphatic system and is undertaken by T-cells. The Gatekeeper was included in the exhibition Art Enlightening Immunology at the Waag, Amsterdam, in 2018, included were further artworks by the artists Marta de Menezes, Herwig Turk and the scientist Luis Graca.

Below are a series of flat art works on watercolour paper made for the project. The principal behind the work, was to give shape to a generalised human body, by defining through the lymphatic sytem, part of the body's immune system, set against what might be trying to dismantle the body, be it viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites. At the most base level, it is the immune system that defines "us" as "us".

For the work 'Over San Francisco' Andrew Carnie worked with the bacteria Serratia Marcescens grown in a medium to be used as 'red' watercolour. Serratia Marcescens is a species of rod-shaped gram-negative bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae, a human pathogen, that Carnie applied through laser-cut stencils onto watercolour paper. An anti-microbial substance in the paper forms a challenge in the making process. Carnie used the custom medium picturing the lymphatic system of the human body.

Historically the bacteria was first deemed to be non-pathogenic and its reddish coloration was used in school experiments to track infections. Only later was Serratia Marcescens discovered to cause 'urinary infections' when dispersed over districts of San Francisco as a tracing agent.