[ISEA2013] Artist Statement: Tagny Duff — Living Viral Tattoos (2008)

Artist Statement

Inert biological material, glass jars.

When we humans walk in a city, run through the halls of a busy airport, roll through a bus terminal or a train station, we are traveling through not only streets, hallways and stairs, but through microbes. The series of sculptures are made of human and pig skin and biological synthetic virus called Lentivirus, a derivative of HIV strain 1, so that transfection and contagion would occur at the cellular level. The virus, cells and tissue are inert now and the biomaterial reveals areas of bluish brownish stains.
https://www.academia.edu/5500308/How_to_Make_Living_Viral_Tattoos