Guy Ben-Ary’s relationship with ANAT stretches back to 2004, when he presented his workMEART at Ciber@RT Bilbao. Since then, ANAT has been a recurring home for his practice: the Ideate Residency in 2020 with longtime collaborator Nathan Thompson, DNA Lab in 2021, and SPECTRA 2022, where their work  Bricolage featured in Machines Like Us, Cells Like Them.

“We are using fragments of life. We’re not using whole organisms. We’re kind of deconstructing and then reconstructing bodies.
We’re deconstructing ideas related to humans and we’re proposing, through those contestable futures, new ways of looking and thinking about what is possible.”

Guy Ben-Ary and Nathan Thompson, Music for Surrogate Performer, Neural network on an interface. Photo by Guy Ben-Ary.

Guy Ben-Ary is a Perth-based artist and researcher, internationally recognised for biotechnological artwork exploring what it means to be alive. His practice uses biotechnology subversively, creating absurd and contestable scenarios that question its influence over life, death, sentience, and intelligence – initiating public debate on the liminal life he creates in the lab. His work has been shown at prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, including MoMA, MONA, Ars Electronica, and the Venice Biennale to name a few.

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