Sophie Xiaofei Guo

Thesis: Biomedicine and Contemporary Art in the Sinophone Cultures (1989-Present)

Supervised by Dr Wenny Teo and Professor Jo Applin 

In this thesis I focus on how biomedicine and biotechnology— understood as the technological use of biological reproduction and transgenic practices, and of biosecurity and life-control systems— transforms image and art making in the Sinophone cultures from the late 1980s to the present day. Looking at the practices of artists such as Li Shan, Lu Yang, Pei-Ying Lin, Candice Lin, Angela Su and Jes Fan, I examine the ways in which these artists engage with knowledges of biotechnology and biomedicine, and the implications of these for gender, sexuality, race, subjectivity and the conception of ecology. I ask how the artists engage translocal knowledge and visual tropes in their diverse responses to the contemporary biotechnological condition, often uncritically seen as originating in ‘the West’. Further, I explore to what extent a post-anthropocentric ecological ethics is formed through the artists’ distinct means of engaging with discourses of new biomedical technologies.