SNEHA SOLANKI

Super-natural
Synthetically constructed new life made during an artists residency at the Center for Bacterial Cell Biology, Newcastle University between 2011 – 2012 connecting  witchcraft from the cusp of the enlightenment period in Western history and the emergent molecular genetic sciences of today.
AV Festival, VANE, Newcastle-upon-tyne, UK. 2012

Installation view
Installation: borosilicate manipulated laboratory glass, glass scrying mirror, projection of time-lapse microscophy  and black paint.

Fresh-air Shed
Arthouses, Whitley Bay, UK. 2011
An installation which highlights how technology is pervasive, invisible and consumed unknowingly, and how nature becomes a media and a technology.
The Fresh-air Shed directly references the research taken from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration- NASA on the purifying effects of common house plants from present volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).

Interior installation  view.
Installation: shed, house plants, gloss paint, thermal foil, sputnik lamp and sputnik chair.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Sneha Solanki is as an artist, educator a producer, working independently and in collaboration.

My practice employs methods of cultural agency, citizen science and surveillance, extending to performance, sound and installation. These are often supported by political, economical and social elements which are then re-used, re-enacted or re-appropriated as records of historical, current or emergent uses of  technology. I have made work from the invisible signals from military bases, with plants, computer viruses enacting cold war politics and currently, I am working in synthetic biology animated by the enlightenment period of witchcraft.

Exhibitions / events / talks / projects / residencies include; Polytechnic director, 2002 – 2012, Super-natural, AV Festival, Newcastle-upon-tyne; Synthesis Lab, Arts Catalyst, London, UK; Cultivation Lab, Our Land is Your Land, CCA, Glasgow, UK; The Black, White and the Grey- Ode to Dj Dangermouse and the Commons, Arts Council England North East; M.O.D Jukebox & Blindspot, Spectropia, Riga, LV; Reclaiming the Nostalgia of Kitchen Science, Open_Sauces, Brussels, BE; The_Lovers, Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade, CS, Brown University Watson Institute, Boston, USA and the Post & Tele Museum, Copenhagen, DK.

Website: http://electronicartist.net/solanki
Contact details: sneha@electronicartist.net