Closer Than Your Family by Heather Dewey-Hagborg

This solo show by artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg features recent works that examine how cutting-edge developments in biotechnology are raising fundamental questions about what it means to be human.

Watson’s Ghost interrogates the interpretation of genetic data, presenting hundreds of interpretations of a single individual's face based on their DNA. Lovesick presents a custom retrovirus designed to infect humans, irrevocably altering their genomes to make them more loving. Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera transforms research around xenotransplantation – the genetic engineering of pigs to supply human organs–into a musical tribute to the creatures giving their lives for these scientific advances. Finally, Future pigs, plural, builds on the research from Hybrid to present a set of speculative portraits of pigs in the future, if human modification continues along the trajectory of today.

Together these works probe the ways human beings are multitudes, via the subjectivity of interpretation, their genetic mutability, and their increasingly chimeric proximity to non-human animals.

Gallery Hours

Monday - Saturday: 9:00a - 5:00p
Or by appointment.