Cynthia Blanchette
Biography
Cynthia Blanchette is a Canadian artist-researcher based in Finland, working as a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University, and a member of the RAT research group led by Laura Beloff. Blanchette’s research interests fall into the abject facets of human-microbial-technological evolution. Within her artistic practice she re-evaluates ubiquitous cultural-societal notions of the lived experience through ideation drawing, artifact collecting, bioart, and textile art. Blanchette has a Master of Arts degree in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art with a minor in Textile Design (Aalto University, 2021), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (University of Saskatchewan, CA, 2014).
Photo credit: Cynthia Blanchette
Parasitic Souvenirs
2024-2025
Installation-size varies
Biomaterials
In vaccination, poison can be a cure, and this logic with two entry points becomes a strategy, a care, a cure. The parasite gives the host the means to be safe from the parasite. The organism reinforces its resistance and increases its adaptability. It is moved a bit away from its equilibrium and it is then even more strongly at equilibrium. The generous hosts are therefore stronger than the bodies without visits …Thus parasitism contributes to the formation of adapted species from the point of view of evolution. Michel Serres (1982). The Parasite. p. 193.
The artistic research explores the concept of microbes as both souvenirs received and gifted, in exchanges of experience imbued with meaning and consequence. Here the concept of the contaminated body is unpacked through both biological disgust (protection from parasites) and moral disgust (protection of values). It is my position that human evolution has evolved via genetic information highways as microbes in the external environment migrate into the human bodily environment. Furthermore, brain chemistry and behaviour are independently impacted by gut microbiota via the gut-brain axis. The term ‘souvenir parasites’ describes microbes collected from our external environment while the contemporary word ‘souvenir’ originates from the Latin subvenīre, meaning ‘to come to mind’. The Parasitic Souvenirs installation presents recreational/therapeutic microbial bio-drugs with mind-altering potency for disgust inducing microbial trips. There are many parasitic cures, poisons and scapegoats still to be understood in human evolution, marking where we have been, where we are, and where we will go. Parasitic Souvenirs represent a platform for enquiry into disgust and host-parasite identities within amplified bodies of multiple genetic origins.
