Embodied Plastic Entanglements (working title)
- Ani Liu
- Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
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Independent Creative Production Grant
A portrait of the artist's breast milk under a microscope.
Emphasizing connective ecologies between industrial processes, the environment, and bodies, breast milk is analyzed for microplastics and heavy metals, with the data visualized in a multimedia art installation to spark ecological care and change. In many industrial processes, heavy metals, greenhouse gasses, and pollutants are produced and dumped into the landscape, impacting multispecies environments. Most people turn a blind eye until the realization that plastic colonization has infiltrated their own bodies. Studies have shown that breastmilk in the last 15 years from mothers in the US contain harmful compounds like flame retardants and BPA, exposing vulnerable infants. Breast milk as a cultural material is loaded with a history of being understudied scientifically, exploited and purposefully demeaned by food conglomerates to sell more formula, as well as the center of much body politics. In choosing breast milk as the subject for this project, Ani Liu aims to re-entangle seemingly intimate acts between bodies to the larger systems it is entangled in. This act of milk forensics is meant to emphasize and expose the connective ecologies between industrial processes, our bodies, the environment, and ecological futures related to both our species and beyond. It is Liu’s hope that it is a project that seeds change through sharing knowledge and sparking conversation.