This was an oldie but a goodieClick link below!
https://vimeo.com/979129808
https://vimeo.com/979129808
In 2021 it was the first time I had ever shown ANY art to the public. I was feeling incredibly dismayed and honestly driven a little insane by how biologists were approaching the pandemic, how little concern for the isolation of a trainee could make a person lose themselves while simultaneously having an existential crisis about whether Biomedicine even matters in the face of political red tape.
I barely had a chance to ever express myself beyond asking questions to speakers for most of my PhD. However, there are several key lab mates, including Dr. Corinne Hutfilz, Dr. Kristina Hinman, Dr. Anandita Basu, and Shade Rodriguez (soon to be Dr. Shade Rodriguez) who have massively provided me long philosophical conversations about our work. It is the nights we spent laughing in lab after spilling distilled water or bleach on my pants and talking about ROS production because of it, or daring each other to see how fast one could extract a fly brain or mouse bone marrow, while I hammered questions about why I should find any research important that I will NEVER forget and werre quintessential to feeling like I got the experience of truly philosophizing.
A collage I made during my PhD
Thank you to the STEAM art initiative run by PhD candidate Julia Licholai who runs the event every year.
Please click the link below to find the STEAM website
https://sites.google.com/brown.edu/steamroom/home
(the images hanging are my collages, most made in a manic blur over the course of a week, when I got to the event, I completely forgot I had no way to hang up seven 2x3 collages I had spent catharsing, so Julia being a top notch event host, lent me red tape and a wall. Thus, I got to use my own red tape to make a point on a brick wall barrier, which to me seems a bit like poetic justice).