Not just viruses. Our world is also (and above all) populated by bacteria.
They were born well before us. And for four billion years they colonized the Earth, helping biological evolution to the point of favoring the appearance of man. They are therefore everywhere, including our human body and we could not live without them. Only in our body live something like 5 thousand different species that together give life to microbiome, that body that is increasingly assuming a considerable weight in the general economy of ours salute, and whose alterations can influence the development of a multitude of different conditions, from allergies toobesity and at autoimmune diseases. For example, some bacteria of the oral cavity are used as predictive biomarkers of the disease status of subjects infected with Covid-19 “.
It has also been shown that within the same community some bacteria are specific markers of the presence of other concomitant diseases, cardiac and neurological, found in these patients. In particular, it was observed that the presence in large quantities of Prevotella jejuni in the oral cavity is associated with the loss of smell, a symptom found in 35% of the patients examined. Covid examined during a research by the University of Trieste.
But bacteria can also become art.
Not only “the essential is invisible to the eye”, as the literature teaches, but what is invisible also helps to keep the body and mind in good health. And on some special occasions it deserves to become the absolute protagonist: this is the case of the microorganisms that live inside our body and in particular of the bacteria that NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts e Yakult Italy they wanted to enhance through the project “BACTERIART, from invisible to visible”, involving the students of the BA in Painting and Visual Arts he was born in MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies of the Academy.
Awarded as the best of the 30 project proposals presented, the work F06. 3 of Francesco Scalas, Giacomo Segantin e Olivier Russo (second year students of the Biennium in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies of NABA): an installation composed of a series of heterogeneous elements that coexist through a system of balance and interdependence. Technological elements such as a projector, speakers and a video screen are closely related to an organic component coexisting with red cabbages, the interior of which resembles the shape of the intestine. A correlation that expresses the desire to overturn the Western-modern anthropic logic that defines the “non-human” of secondary importance.
The winning project is also joined by the two special mentions assigned: Bacterial Identities of Sofia Gasparoli which was awarded the Doctor Shirota award for the accurate
scientific study in design. The work is a sculpture born from the idea of uniqueness in the combination of bacteria that define individuals as human beings, inspired by the scientific discovery carried out by a research carried out by the University of Oregon in 2015 which showed that they differ in their personal microbial cloud, a sort of “biological fingerprint” that all people have and thanks to which individual individuals can be distinguished. To the project human nature SD / SD’s spirits at Jessie Yu was instead assigned the New Visions award for having interpreted the theme from invisible to visible in a more unexpected way ”. The work is based on two Atlas, one specular to the other, which meet in a sort of communication in which in the first section nature “writes” to the human, while in the second the human “writes” to the self. The project, whose final result is a series of postcards simulating a journey to different places, whose protagonists are bacteria, represents a critique of anthropocentrism: people are so busy concentrating on the fulfillment of their desires that they forget the well-being of nature.
The winning students in the three categories were awarded by Yakult Italia with a monetary recognition, with which the company intends to support their artistic and professional path.
For info: https://www.naba.it/it/naba-e-yakult-italia-per-bacteriart-day