Anna Dumitriu’s work is characterized by a strong knowledge of microbiology. Her installations, interventions, and performances use biological, digital and traditional media (for example, live bacteria, robotics, interactive media, and textiles). Dumitriu became known through her works “The VRSA Dress” and “THE MRSA Quilt,” which are made of so-called “superbugs” (antibiotics-resistant pathogenic bacteria). For these works, she grew bacteria strains on textiles and used natural and clinical antibiotics to pattern the textiles (sterilized prior to the exhibition). The exhibition “[micro]biologies I: the bacterial sublime“ also includes works from her series “Romantic Disease,” which explores the history of tuberculosis from artistic, social and scientific perspectives, including subjects such as superstition, literary and romantic connotations, the history of the development of antibiotics, and the latest research on whole-genome sequencing of mycobacterium.

Anna Dumitriu is currently artist-in-residence for the UK Clinical Research Consortium project on “Modernising Medical Microbiology” at Oxford University. In 2012, she received the Society for Applied Microbiology Communication Award. We are pleased that the exhibition at Art Laboratory Berlin gives us an opportunity to support an artist who is already well-known in the UK and whose work fits perfectly with the focus of the Schering Stiftung.