Julie Harrison, Bodies #8332: Pasadena
May 1 – June 30, 2021
The Residency Project
880 Worcester Ave
Pasadena, CA 91104
Bodies #8332 is outdoors, free, and open to the public, no appointment necessary.
Tag us in your IG photos: @theresidencyproject
The Residency Project in Pasadena, CA is proud to present “Bodies #8332,” a new site-responsive work by New York artist Julie Harrison, on view May 1 – June 30, 2021. The artist explains:
“I have long been inspired by the body — as metaphor, as subject, as medium… My fascination with biology was enhanced when introduced to scanning electron microscopic images as faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology. This led me to learn about microorganisms and create drawings based on this research. Now I frame and rearrange invisible images of disparate organisms in surreal ways that can seem unexpected and disorienting. I play with the idea that these life-forms might combine and form relationships with one another. Can we all just get along? These cohabitations are the inspiration for the biological universes I create on paper.”
Upon invitation by The Residency Project, Julie Harrison studied and selected major soil and plant microbes living in the Los Angeles-Southern California area. These microbes included Achromobacter, Bacillus, Bradyrhizobium, Cupriavidus, Enterococcus, Pseudomonas, Stenotrophomonas, and Streptomyces.
In addition to digging deeply into these invisible but vibrant lifeforms in an attempt to bring them to the surface, Harrison’s collage-drawings present alternative actualities by asserting relationships between microorganisms that would not normally co-exist in real space. In this way, Harrison acts as a puppeteer, placing these abstracted forms into imaginary microbiomes that blur the boundary between science and fiction. In doing so, her work opens us up to several questions: What is reality and what is possibility? If we don’t currently co-exist with others, is there a possibility that we ever could? How might we begin to craft that reality?
JULIE HARRISON is an artist in New York City who has moved between drawing, photography, video, painting, and performance. She has exhibited widely, is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and has works in several notable public and private collections. From 2003–2010, Harrison founded and directed the Art & Technology B.A. Program at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (having taught there since 1992), and is currently associated with Granary Books, publisher of work exploring the intersection of word, image and page. Learn more about her work at theresidencyproject.org/installations
