Mara Menahan

The sky is a membrane between us and space

I am interested in disrupting human-centered ways of looking and thinking. I use layers and translucency, implicating the observer in what is observed, blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, analog and digital, feral and domestic, body and environment.

From my experience working alongside scientists as both a botanical illustrator and a technician at an atmospheric research station, my work responds to scientific ways of knowing. I question how media and imaging technology such as microscopes, satellite data, infrared cameras and cinematic devices extend our vision and collective consciousness. How these devices intersect with systems of power. And how technologic and scientific information can be viewed in non-positivist, open-ended ways. 

For these reasons, I make material screens, collaging scientific information alongside other ways of knowing. Low-tech, poetic, interfaces that slow viewers down and bring us back into our bodies. Bodies with holes. Bodies that leak. Bodies contaminated and contained.

Images

/Image%20of%20a%20glass%20orb%20with%20blue%20light%2C%20water%20and%20a%20blurry%20figure /Image%20of%20a%20glass%20orb%20with%20blue%20light%2C%20water /Paintings%20on%20transparent%20fabric%20draped%20over%20house%20frame%20 /Paintings%20on%20transparent%20fabric /Millenium%20bench%20%28detail%29 /An%20image%20of%20a%20darkened%20interior%20space%2C%20a%20doorway%20covered%20in%20fabric%20and%20an%20animation%20with%20multiple%20moving%20windows%20projected%20on%20opposite%20wall /Close%20up%20of%20video%20projection%20on%20wall%20 /Yellow%20and%20green%20painting%20of%20dead%20rabbit%20

EXHIBITION IMAGES

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