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Friends of Friends by Crystal Z Campbell displays a cell taken from a Black American woman without her permission. This reveals how scientists disrespect and exploit individuals to push on their desire of science and medical advancement. The artwork examines the ironic relationship between individuals, that although all humans are genetically similar, some people’s voices are more respected in the society. This promotes me to think that sometimes the cost of benefiting the “system” we all live in is often to sacrifice some individuals in or not in the same species as us.

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Minakata Mandala and From Hierarchy to Holarchy by Jenna Sutella was inspired by corporate hierarchy charts and a mandala. Its function is when someone moves near it, the spotlight will show a yellow organism moving through channels. This special effect could be reflecting the relationship of one individual subconsciously responding to others in a hierarchy system. Although I didn’t understand why Jenna Sutella tried to convey this message, it is definitely a phenomenon that may occur in people's daily lives as rule followers always have to respond to rule setters in the system we live in.

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Alan Michelson's Wolf Nation depicts a video of the red wolf, the coloring and design had been inspired by Indigenous culture. Eventually all of the wolves in the video leave except for one, showing the species' vulnerability. Michelson is trying to express that we need to rethink the current models we use to operate our world and their impact on the natural world. Furthermore, he's also trying to show that Indigenous practices or traditional methods provide other ways to work things that are better for the species we live along side.

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Kiyan Williams' Ruins of Empire II shows a face made of soil with a petrol-like liquid dripping onto the face. Here, Williams is making a commentary on chattel slavery, settler colonialism and environmental extraction. The soil is as if he's 'unearthing' untold stories Black communities and the liquid is referring petrol chemical plants that polluted their air, water and soil. He is examining the relationship between Black life, ecology and US society, spreading awareness about how pollution not only affects the environment but us humans as well.

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Claire Pentecost, in her art, examines the cost of the capitalist exploitation of nature. This is shown through how she moulds soil, a part of nature, into currency like objects, ironically reflecting the human tendency to commodify natural resources that are not ours to modify. Additionally, this transformation of soil into currency also portrays the great value that nature carries, and how the destruction of the earth is something that should be valued just as much as money.

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Alan Michelson's Bio artwork "Wolf Nation" is a pixelated footage depicting a group of red wolves, which mainly consists of colors that were inspired by indigenous culture. In his artwork, wolf symbolizes resilience, and survival of indigenous culture despite other disruptions to get rid of them. The video shows multitudes of wolves leaving only one red wolf in the end, which emphasizes culture's vulnerability. Michelson aims to convey that we need to review those systems that surround us nowadays, suggesting how indigenous system could also work as alternatives. Michelson highlights the ongoing impact of colonization, particularly the loss of lands and cultural suppression faced by Indigenous peoples.

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Gilberto Esparza’s Plantas Autofotosintéticas is a living sculpture and prototype for bioremediation and sustainable energy. It contains a closed ecosystem where microbial fuel cells (MFCs) filter wastewater and convert organic waste into electricity, which powers lights that sustain aquatic plants in a central aquarium. This process symbolizes the interdependence of natural systems and the potential for sustainable technology. Esparza highlights the critical role of bacterial symbionts in maintaining ecological balance and underscores the need for innovative approaches to wastewater management and energy production. This artwork serves two main purposes: presenting a functional experiment and a commentary on humanity’s ability to coexist with natural processes, suggesting hope for a more brighter future.

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Claire Pentecost’s art are a collection of fictive currency that celebrate nonhuman energy workers that convert waste to humus, like earthworms, beneficial fungus, and others, as well as human agricultural reformers and ecologically minded philosophers and artists, whom she calls “teachers of Gaia”. Pentecost celebrates and praises them, emphasizing through her art the importance of interdependence and sustainable practices, imagining a planetary economy based upon living systems, earth, and nature that we depend upon and are in debt to instead of the powerful..

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Pamela Rozenskranz’s work She Has No Mouth explores the relationship between toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease caused by a protozoan called toxoplasma gondii, cats, humans, and other animals. Toxoplasmosis contorts the behavior of hosts, even allowing mice to face or even attracted to its feline predators. In humans, it is also surprisingly widespread, with 30 to 50 percent of the world been exposed or have latent infections. It reflects how human behaviors are shaped by the “natural” world, just like toxoplasmosis and how it makes people attracted to some perfumes or animals, showing the deep, often unseen relationship between humans and other inhabitants of this world.

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Nour Mubarak, in her artwork, explores themes of interdependence and reproduction in nature. The theme of interdependence is evinced through her facilitation of fungi growth by “fill[ing the orbs] with spores and wood pellets, then dous[ing] with water and suppl[ying] with oxygen”. The theme of reproduction is shown through how the orbs of fungi adapt to adversity by shifting between self and sexual reproduction. Nour Mubarak utilizes these orbs as an allegory to her own reproductive life, as “external circumstances—and logistics” have similarly “shaped her ability to reproduce, both biologically and as an artist.”

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Cystal Z Campbell creates artworks that explore issues of inequalities and suppressed histories.  In Friends of Friends, Campbell displays glass cubes featuring images of the HeLa cells. Campbell explores a story where a black woman’s cells are taken without her consent, and the cells have made great contributions to the medical research field. The work explores the problems of race, ethics, and class, while also emphasizing the woman’s nonconsensual gift to science.

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Pierre Huyghe creates art that discovers the hidden relationships that are often overlooked between humans and animals. In Huyghe’s work Spider, twenty spiders were released in the Bakalar Gallery. Huyghe tries to challenge our tendency of controlling and displaying non-human organisms, which is seen in aquariums and zoos. Huyghe is not trying to display creatures that would frighten people, but rather he wants to emphasize creatures that already live near us, such as spiders, which we often ignore.

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Her use of all sorts of biological materials in her sculptural works shows off the complicated web of connections between all sorts of different life. By using all different living materials, she shows how despite their differences, they all contribute to one ‘system’ (in reality more or less several). She wants us to recognize the connections that bind us to the natural world. How our "waste" is given to nourish the mushrooms and transforms into something nutritious and beneficial for our health. The value of non-human life is much more important than many people view.

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Candice Lin's "Memory (Study #2)" exemplifies a powerful disruption of traditional art systems and institutional norms. By incorporating living lion's mane mushrooms nourished with staff-contributed urine, the artwork challenges conventional museum practices, disrupts the typical passive viewer-artwork relationship, and blurs lines of authorship and ownership. This unconventional approach introduces a living, growing biological system into the sterile gallery environment, forcing a reconsideration of art as a static object. The piece's requirement for active participation from museum staff in its maintenance further challenges institutional authority and the typical roles within art preservation. Through these elements, Lin's work simultaneously disrupts artistic, institutional, and biological systems, compelling viewers to reassess their understanding of art creation, presentation, and conservation within the museum context.

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Gilberto Esparzas artwork explores the coexistence of human creations and technology, and natural environments. It examines how with the use of technology we are able to help sustain the natural world. Waste water is filtered into the tank, but at the same time the lighting of the art piece helps support the living environment inside the tank. The filtering of waste water creates electricity that then helps the life of the central aquarium. In a way it can show how we both harm the environment, and can help sustain it at the same time.

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Jes Fan's "Systems II" disrupts conventional biological and social systems by encapsulating charged biological materials (Depo-Testosterone, Estradiol, and melanin) within an abstract sculptural form. By isolating these substances associated with sex, gender, and race, Fan challenges the biopolitical constructs that typically define and categorize human bodies. The artwork's fusion of organic forms with a grid-like structure further blurs the lines between natural and artificial, questioning the rigidity of societal classifications. This piece effectively disrupts our understanding of biological determinism and socially constructed identities, forcing viewers to reconsider the systems that typically govern our perceptions of sex, gender, and race.

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Pamela (she has no mouth) -> might refer to how desires and emotions to someone can be due to certain things and draw us to something that “has no mouth?” relationshio wise?

“Increasingly natural unnatural world”

Skeptical around human centrism

“Neurochemical forces can be responsible for desire and emotion”

Led lit circle perfume infused sand (mens perfume)

Power of invisible symbionts that crates shared desire

Sand represents cat litter which can represent cat litter where the parasite  is transmitted

Parasite can change behavior

It blocks mice from fearing cats, causes attraction

The parasite can then reproduce (uses the creatures for it’s benefit)

It has a role in our desire

Same scent appeals to us -> especially those with the parasite

“Having it can determine our “kinship” for people with the right scent? (Musk)  or simply with someones beloved “cat”

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The artists released 20 spiders into Bakarlar art gallary, encouraged them to build webs and then migrate to other areas in the gallary. Pierre Hyghe has this interest about the relationship between humans and nature, and tends to break the prejiduce humans hold and the idea of human-centric.

He aims to “highlight” the already existing symbionts around us. Encourage bonding and interactions to happen, to accept and rethink about the current relationship

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Nour Mobarak’s artwork examines the relationship between humans and fungi. In her artwork Sphere Studies and Reproductive Logistics, she explains how human-made materials can interact with natural materials like mycelium. By combining plastic with fungi. She also focuses on fungi reproductive patterns. Nour also compares the fungi's reproductive patterns to humans. Fungus changes its reproduction patterns due to their environment just like humans due. Nour's goal is to examine the similarity in how fungus and human reproductive patterns change due to the environment

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Špela Petrič’s performance Confronting Vegetal Otherness: Skotopoiesis attempts to explores the relationship between humans and plants, more specifically how humans can affect plants using their actions. In her performance, she stand over a rectangular piece of grass, casting a shadow over it, the grass that is covered by the shadow then shows response by growing towards the light which demonstrates that plants, like humans can react to their environment, also showing that communication between different species can be possible