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New gallery exhibition explores postpartum with AI and synthetic breast milk
By
D Peterschmidt, Science Friday
Published Jun 5, 2022
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D Peterschmidt
By
D Peterschmidt, Science Friday
Published Jun 5, 2022
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One of Ani Liu’s strengths as an artist is her ability to process emotion through different scientific mediums: machine learning, chemistry, 3D-printing. The result is often visceral: she’s used organic chemistry to concoct perfumes that smell like people emotionally close to her and engineered a device that enables the wearer to control the direction of swimming sperm with their mind.
Liu became a parent shortly before the pandemic, and she channeled that experience into a new show called “Ecologies of Care,” to process her postpartum period and the communities in her life that helped her through that time.
AI-generated text and toys for the piece “A.I. Toys (unboxing mania).”
D Peterschmidt
328 feet of tubing filled with synthetic milk, as part of the piece, “Untitled (Pumping; Feeding Through Space and Time).”
D Peterschmidt
And at her new exhibition—next to a 3D-printed sculpture of a pig’s uterus—lies 328 feet of clear tubing with a milky-white substance pumped through it, a commentary on pumping breast milk as a new parent. “I wanted to use my own breast milk, but it wouldn’t be stable for the duration of the show,” she said.
SciFri · Processing Postpartum With AI And Synthetic Breast Milk Art
“I hope that this can allow new parents to bond and maybe feel less lonely,” she said. “In making it, I was questioning how do we create better communities of care? I made all of this work before the formula shortage, before our reproductive rights were even more under threat. When I look at this, I’m hoping that you see this particular slice of love and labor.”
Artist Ani Liu
D Peterschmidt
“Ecologies of Care” is on view at the Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space in New York City until July 30, 2022.
This story originally appeared on Science Friday and was republished with permission.
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D Peterschmidt, Science Friday
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