Introduction

From the Visible Human Project to the Human Genome Project, this introduction describes some of the haughty biotechnological spectacles of the turn of the twentieth century, which have informed over twenty years of my critical artistic engagement with the life sciences. It elaborates my artistic motivations as well as the personal and situational factors influencing this work, beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing through 2020. Finally, it summarizes how each subsequent chapter explores a different artwork alongside the critical questions on which it dialogues.