‘A bio lab is a place of working with living organisms, brought out of their habitat so we can learn to think outside of the Petri dish. Let’s take care of these teachers!’
At the Avans Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT), Michaela Davidová is lab coordinator at creative research lab Material Incubator
Michaela Davidova (1988, she/her) is a Czech artist, teacher and researcher based in Tilburg, the Netherlands. She holds a BA(Hons) Artist, Designer: Maker degree from the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Wales; and an MA in Ecology Futures from the Master Institute of Visual Cultures, Noord Brabant.
Her research is hugely driven by the process. Body waste, DIY column chromatography, urine-based photographic developer, belly sounds, ingredients, pinhole cameras and morphing growing cultures are all part of her practice. Although her artistic research revolves around analogue photography, it is not limited to images. Instead, she aims to bring audiences closer to ecological thinking and making which she explains as ‘getting out of the frame and enlarging the artist/researcher’s role into an alchemist and a carer’.
Michaela Davidova is an active workshop teacher in alternative photographic processes and bio art. She is teaching at Minerva Art Academy in Groningen together with Dutch artist and researcher Risk Hazekamp, and at St. Joost Akademie at the minor Material Ecologies led by Annemarie Piscaer. Besides being an artist, lab coordinator and teacher, she is a freelance project coordinator and a co-curator in the Tilburg-based project space SEA Foundation, where she is inviting guests into the monthly reading circles. She collaborated with and supports the community Sustainable Darkroom collective (UK) and is a member of a film lab Filmwerkplaats, Rotterdam (NL). Her graduation research named Constructed Wetlands & Deconstructed Borders was awarded EKP Excellence in Research Award 2022. It focuses on the ecological impact of photographic materials and darkroom waters, their remediation and digestion by living organisms and the thin borders between the humanature.
Picture by Vlasta Casadio
