An unclassifiable figure within the current arts scene, WhiteFeather Hunter calls as much on witchcraft, science, and research as on the visual arts. Inspired by the strong resurgence of ecofeminist and neo-materialist practices and theories in contemporary art, Hunter, who considers herself both witch and artist, strives to highlight the agency of materials through a practice that coalesces craft and cutting-edge technology. Borrowing experimental and critical potentialities from bioart with regard to medical discourse and the \u201chard sciences,\u201d her research aims to challenge phallocentric, capitalist, and technocratic assumptions. Her materials of preference \u2014 human or animal cells, bacteria, microorganisms, spores \u2014 act as vectors of contamination capable of infiltrating regimes of knowledge otherwise impermeable to any form of critical reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her most recent project, The Witch in the Lab Coat<\/em> (since 2019), and the accompanying subproject, Mooncalf<\/em>, once again support this vested techno-feminist and materialist position, melding alchemy, molecular engineering, and performance art in order to avert the scientific discrediting of practices and wisdom situated outside the patriarchal system. As part of this research-creation project conducted at the SymbioticA biological art laboratory, Hunter collects her own menstrual blood with the aim of \u201cproducing\u201d a nutrient serum for growing living tissue. This antispeciesist alternative to bovine fetal serum, generally used in laboratories, offers a unique source of proteins essential to medicine while extricating vaginal fluid, otherwise considered repugnant and impure, from the capitalist and patriarchal paradigm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This benevolent re-appropriation of the female body outside the heterosexist framework of biomedical research is not unrelated to the ethics of care<\/em> and the revalorization of Indigenous knowledge; it advances the potential agency of materials and methods long prohibited, or even demonized, by so-called Judeo-Christian objectivity. With this marriage of transdisciplinary materialist methodologies, Hunter re-engages with the notion of natureculture and cogently materializes the intrinsically discursive and political nature of both scientific discourse and the materials and technologies that it utilizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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