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Anaconda Inc. , 2025

A commission for POUSH, part of the exhibition -minimal minimal-, Aubervilliers, France.  22.05-19.07.25

Anaconda shed, Agar-Agar, Penicillium, Mica, Silicone, Steel,

Oscilloscope, Accéléromètre , Capteur piézoélectrique, Transformateur

100 ×200cm  each

In this techno-organic diptych, matter itself becomes language — a site of negotiation between the living and the artificial. This skin,

offered by an absent body, is charged with contradictions: it decays

and preserves, glimmers and disintegrates. Wrapped in agar-agar,

traced by microbial cartographies of Penicillium, then sealed in silicone envelope, Armour orchestrates a cohabitation between organic

decomposition and synthetic preservation.

Accelerometers embedded in the skin detect vibrations caused by the

presence of visitors, interpreting them like an aquatic snake sensing its

prey. The signals are transcribed in real time by an analog oscilloscope

(salvaged from the MNHN).

Anaconda Inc. exposes the insidious logics of biocapitalism, artificial

intelligence, and diffuse surveillance technologies.

POUSH 2025-Minimal Minimal-001 copy.jpg

THE SUM OF OUR PARTS


Featuring :  Zoe Alameda, Dana-Fiona Armour, Patricia Ayres, Gina Beavers, Skuja Braden, Amy Bravo, Debra Cartwright, Claire Chey, Angela Conant, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Natalia Giraldo, Shana Hoehn, Sonia Jia, Dew Kim, Kajin Kim, Luis Enrique Zela- Koort, Preslav Kostov, Jens Kothe, Josefina Labourt, Keunmin Lee, Santiago Licata, Lionel Maunz, Jeffrey Meris, Pol Morton, Anousha Payne, Agnes Questionmark, Kristin Reger, Rodrigo Ramírez Rodríguez, Jonathan Santoro, Loup Sarion, Grace Sachi Troxell, Derek Weisberg

 

May 4th - June 4th 2024 Swivel Gallery , New York

dana fiona armour, swivel gallery

Pneumathophore #6, Installation view, The Sum Of Our Parts, Swivel Gallery,

New York, USA 2024

dana fiona armour, swivel gallery

Solenoglyphous C.C, 2023 For Noor Riyadh curated by Jérome Sans 

Iridescent opaline, crystal glass, solar lights

Site specific installation

25pieces of 140 x 35 x 39 cm each (slighty variable)

Emerging from the sand, creating a dystopian landscape,

Solenoglyphous C.C are oddly shaped glass sculptures

directly inspired by the fangs of Cerastes Cerastes, a species

of snake native to the Saudi Arabian’s deserts. These

uncanny crystal glass formations are reminiscing of the

reptile’s attribute by their iridescent color, alluding to the

visual hallucinations due to venom, techniques of

camouflage in the animal kingdom and the snake’s vision.

Like a Fata Morgana, these strange minerals half-reptilian,

half-genetal attract the visitors by the light reflecting on the

surface by day or emerging from within by night. Dana-Fiona

Armour by evoking the figure of the snake echoes the

numerous cosmogonies in which the creature steals

whether the sun or the moon. She also goes beyond

preconceptions and in a scientific approach with the choice

of the fang enlightens the venom apparatus and its effects

on human body : beyond a death threat, also a cure if wisely

used.

NOOr riyadh,  Dana Fiona Armour, Jerome Sans

Installation view, Noor Riyadh Festival, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2023

NOOr riyadh,  Dana Fiona Armour, Jerome Sans
NOOr riyadh,  Dana Fiona Armour, Jerome Sans

Installation view, Noor Riyadh Festival, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2023

AD PERPERTUM – die Entwicklung der Körperlichkeit

with Dana-Fiona Armour, Sophia Belkin, Lucile Boiron, Mathilde Denize, Jeh Lee, and Fabio Romano, Setareh Gallery, Dusseldorf,Germany, 2023

Setareh_In_Perpetuum, dana Fiona armour

(From left to right)

Pneumatophore #7, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides, metallic salts

112 x 18 x 17 cm

(44 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 6 3/4 in.)

Pneumathophore #6, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides, metallic salts

15 x 15 x 56 cm

(5 7/8 x 5 7/8 x 22 1/8 in.)

Pneumatophore #5, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides, metallic salts

25 x 22 x 94 cm

(9 7/8 x 8 5/8 x 37 1/8 in.)

Setareh_In_Perpetuum, dana Fiona armour

Installation view, AD PERPERTUM – Die Entwicklung der Körperlichkeit

A TALE OF SYMBIOGENESIS

Dana-Fiona Armour at

Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, 2023

Symbiogenesis is the extremely rare, but permanent, merger of two organisms from phylogenetically distant lineages into one radically more complex organism.1

Is there still value in Darwin’s theory, stating that competition is the most certain way to survive, in the age of the Anthropocene? Or is cooperation between different species, potentially leading to hybridization and symbiogenesis, a shortcut to increase survival? Dana-Fiona Armour’s exhibition

at Andréhn-Schiptjenko investigates these questions and aims to create an inter-species dialogue between humans and vegetal matter.

The artist defines herself as an artist/researcher and has collaborated with the Biotechnology company Cellectis, the Biotechnology Institute of Aix Marseille, the sound engineer Thibaut Javoy, The University of Tel Aviv as well as the Paris Descartes University Medical Imaging Laboratory for hercurrent body of work; turning the exhibition into a hybrid of fine art and an experimental research laboratory, in effect

dissolving the borders between science and art.

Invited as the first artist in residence at Cellectis, a genome engineering company specialized in the development of immunotherapies, Dana-Fiona Armour developed the Project MC1R. This project is a mix of visual art and biotech whereby she created a transgenic plant carrying the human MC1R gene. She inoculated the most widely used experimental host in plant virology: Nicotiana Benthamiana, with a synthesized gene responsible for skin colour and tanning, and then used VR technology to access the roots of these plants. The first phase of the Project MC1R was exhibited at the CollectionLambert in Avignon, France in 2022 and her most recent body of works is a continuation of this research, shown for the first time at Andréhn-Schiptjenko.

Dana-Fiona Armour’s cast glass works, titled Nervures Secondaires, appear as fossils winding in ornamental shapes and evoke an entirely new symbiotic organism. These works merge different types of glass - crystal, opaline and colored glass to form a hybridized composite entity which actually

contains similar compounds as human and animal bones do.

1 ThomasCavalier-Smith,Symbiogenesis:Mechanisms,

Evolutionary Consequences, and Systematic Implications,

Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 2013.

dana fiona armour

Installation view, A Tale of Symbiogenesis, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Sweden, 2023

dana fiona armour, Andrehn-schiptjenko, stockholm

(purple) Pneumatophore #2, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides, metallic salts

19 x 120 x 14 cm

(7 1/2 x 47 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.)

(pink) Pneumatophore #4, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides, metallic salts

9 x 45 x 10 cm

(3 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 4 in.)

dana fiona armour, Andrehn-schiptjenko, stockholm

Pneumatophore #3, 2022

Glass, melanin, oxides,

metallic salts

38 x 75 x 14 cm

(15 x 29 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.)

dana fiona armour, Andrehn-schiptjenko, stockholm
dana fiona armour, Andrehn-schiptjenko, stockholm

Nervures Secondaires 2, 2023

Cast glass

73 x 87 x 4 cm

(28 3/4 x 34 1/4 x 1 5/8 in.)

dana fiona armour, Andrehn-schiptjenko, stockholm

Nervures Secondaires 3, 2023

Cast glass

73 x 77 x 4 cm

(28 3/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 5/8 in.)

Scan Micro CT Nicotiana Benthamiana -

Pre Transgenesis ACT II, (Extract) 2022

Ed. of 5 + 2 AP

Video and quadraphonic sound

Dimensions variable

dana fiona armour
dana fiona armour

Scan Micro CT Nicotiana Benthamiana -

Pre Transgenesis ACT II, (Extract) 2022

Ed. of 5 + 2 AP

Video and quadraphonic sound

Dimensions variable

dana fiona armour
dana fiona armour

Vue Microscopique Numéro 2

(Nicotiana Benthamiana transgénique ), 2022

Dichroic glass and digital print, fine art paper,

assembled on dibond

100 x 40 cm (39 3/8 x 15 3/4 in.)

À REVERS, le 19M, Aubervilliers, 2023

Avec Adelaïde Feriot, Bianca Bondi, Célia Gondol, Dana-Fiona Armour, Michel Jocaille, Demian Majcen, Gaëlle Choisne, Deborah Fischer, Kenia Almaraz Murillo, Pauline Guerrier et Sara Favriau

dana fiona armour , le 19M, Chanel

Installation view, À Revers, 19M,

Paris, 2023

dana fiona armour , le 19M, Chanel

MC1R Plasmid Map, 2022

Embroidered fabric, stainless steel

175 x 220 cm

(68 7/8 x 86 5/8 in.)

In collaboration with Atelier Montex

Project MC1R

Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, 2022.

Man is here metamorphosed into a plant, but do not think this is a fiction in the style of those of Ovid.1

“Project MC1R” was envisioned as part of a residency of the artist within the company Cellectis, describing itself as “a clinical-stage biotechnology company using its pioneering gene-editing technology TALEN® to develop innovative therapies for treating serious diseases”. The collaboration gave rise to the conception of a hybrid plant,

both human and plant, a Nicotiana Benthamiana (a species highly sensitive to viruses often used in research, especially for the vaccine against COVID-19)now carrying the MC1R gene, a human gene associated with complexion, skin colour, the development of freckles and red hair, all of which allow for the description of the physical appearance of the artist.

Through this project, Dana-Fiona Armour continues her exploration of an unstable world in which the forms she creates stand as real mutagens, transform one another, and alter the organisation of the spaces they occupy, causing a feeling of disturbing strangeness in us.

The genetically modified plants took place like sculptures of a new kind, evoking The Metamorphoses by Ovid, the terrifying images from Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg or the stories from Man a Plant by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. These plants stand as the centre of a genuine laboratory of transformations where installations, immersive videos, glass or marble sculptures unfold, while an unbelievable song resounds in the rooms–an incredible litany in the form of an alert generated by plants audible only by animals until then.

In this hybrid world where the artificial blends with the natural, the human with the non-human, science acts as a key–trouble making element in the construction of our relationships to the world and their representation. Both authoritative and fragile, it is this place of tension where boundaries change with a concerning instability between ethics and progress, between the opening of new liberating spaces and the achievement of dangerous mutations with irreversible consequences.

 

1 Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Plant, 1748

dana fiona armour, projet MC1R, Collection lambert

Installation view, Project MC1R, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, 2022.

dana fiona armour, projet MC1R, Collection lambert

Installation view, Project MC1R, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, 2022.

Scan Micro CT Nicotiana Benthamiana – pre transgenesis, 2022

Video and Virtual Reality, 6’13 mn. (Extract)

dana fiona armour, projet MC1R, Collection lambert

Installation view, Project MC1R, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, 2022.

dana fiona armour, projet MC1R, Collection lambert

Installation view, Project MC1R, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, 2022.

dana fiona armour, projet MC1R, Collection lambert

Nicotiana Benthamiana , detail (Installation view)

Project MC1R, 2022

PLANET B. Climate change & the new sublime, Radicants, Palazzo

Bollani, Venice, Italy

Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud 

with 

Dana-Fiona Armour

Bianca Bondi

Roberto Cabot

Anna Conway

Kendell Geers

Anna Bella Geiger

Max Hooper Schneider

Per Kirkeby

Lucia Pizzani

Thiago Rocha Pitta

Ylva Snöfrid

Haegue Yang

Phillip Zach

dana fiona armour, Nicolas Bourriaud, Venise, projet MC1R

Installation view, Project MC1R, Radicants, Palazzo Bollani, Venise, Italie, 2022.

dana fiona armour, Nicolas Bourriaud, Venise, projet MC1R
dana fiona armour, Nicolas Bourriaud, Venise, projet MC1R

DANA-FIONA ARMOUR: SCULPTURE AS STASIS AND CALCULATION

By Nicolas Bourriaud

Among the upheavals brought by the Anthropocene, including the climatic and health crises we are currently experiencing, there is one that particularly impacts human sensitivity and art, because it affects the nature of representations and their center of gravity. This phenomenon could be described as a crisis of the human scale. Over the past decade, it seems that modes of figuration—how artists observe and symbolize the world—are no longer indexed to human bodily coordinates.

A cornerstone of Western art since ancient Greece, the fixed and stable relationships established between subject and object, form and matter, have been fundamentally disrupted. More strikingly, a disoriented humanity no longer knows to whom or to what it should address itself, under the influence of an ecological catastrophe that blurs the imaginary boundaries once drawn between nature and culture. After reducing nature to an exploitable resource and colonizing peoples deemed outside the "progress" narrative, post-industrial societies now self-colonize. There is no longer an "outside." Psychoanalyst Félix Guattari foresaw this issue as early as the 1980s: "It is the relationship of subjectivity to its exteriority—whether social, animal, vegetal, or cosmic—that is compromised," he wrote.

A new generation of artists, sensing this shift, experiences a sudden and total immersion in reality, as though the screen displaying the image of the "other" had gone dark, or the mirror through which humanity previously dialogued with itself had suddenly blurred. For this generation, which can no longer distinguish "inside" from "outside," form no longer opposes matter. Instead, both form a continuous flow of incessant transformations. The most compelling contemporary artists inform the material and extract information from it, observing the world at a molecular level. Art has ceased to regard objects as such because objects no longer exist; nor do products, as everything is a product. Art now approaches both based on their chemical or microphysical components. This is the formula for contemporary realism: rendering the invisible, the gigantic, or the microscopic aspects of the human environment. Today, what forces drive the history of the planet if not bacteria, viruses, particles, gases, heat levels, and cloud masses?

Dana-Fiona Armour assimilates sculpture to a dissection protocol aimed at establishing new relationships between the artist’s body and the work. Her practice involves metabolism—the set of chemical reactions within a living being that sustain life, reproduction, and growth. Armour’s works materialize phenomena occurring in other living environments, whether human or non-human. She employs blood, skin, animal organs, and synthetic materials interchangeably, reflecting the indistinct boundaries between the "natural" and the "artificial."

To represent the human body realistically, Armour makes subtle shifts, manipulating forms that are also living materials. Again, no clear distinction remains. The pig, whose DNA shares 98% similarity with humans, becomes a medium for self-representation. At the core of Armour's work is the relationship between her body and the artifacts she produces. She overturns traditional sculptural methods: no carving, no modeling, no imposition of form onto a base. This challenges the gendered concept Aristotle held of artistic creation, where "matter aspires to form," a metaphor likening passive femininity to active masculinity. Instead of imposing forms, Armour collaborates with raw material, using coatings, inseminations, and impregnations to birth living works rather than manufacturing them.

Armour’s practice aligns with an anthropological logic: the human species has evolved by adding prosthetics, projecting the interior outward. Where other species develop scales or wings, humans created armor and airplanes. Her works reflect this logic as excrescences, transpositions, or eviscerations—externalizing organic formations.

Liver, intestines, heart… Art becomes a plastic medicine, revealing flows traversing living matter and offering diagnoses of our surrounding reality. Armour seeks to manifest herself as a body, visible and intelligible, beyond mere image. Her background as a model—an object subjected to others’ reifying gaze—likely shapes the radical self-portraiture she pursues: pure flesh matching her exact dimensions, circles 1.45 meters in diameter, a flattened and stretched identity. The self becomes a quantity—as Paul Valéry put it, "the deepest thing is the skin." To expose her interiority, Armour splits herself in two: the rawness of organs and the nakedness of the fleshy surface.

Her work recalls Félix Gonzalez-Torres’ 1990s portraits, such as bloodwork analyses or pearl sculptures representing his plasma, which visitors passed through like curtains. While drawing from Viennese actionism’s butchery gestures and corporeal expressionism, Armour belongs more to the legacy of the Cuban artist who renewed intimacy in art by reappropriating minimalist vocabulary.

Armour reconciles opposites: the living and the necrotic. Her research project Nephrolithiasis ACT I (2020) explores dead elements within metabolisms—cysts, calculi, clots, and stones. By artificially recreating inert aggregates produced by life, Armour proposes a new metaphor for sculpture: stasis within a process, between living tissue and mineralization. In 2018, she "cultivated" a marble surface with pig’s blood and bone powder. The mineral became akin to skin, where life and "organic disorder" evolve.

Is art itself a dead element inserted into the living fabric of human societies? Armour tackles this profound question, foregrounding calcification or crystallization as tools for form-making. Her work resonates with the Anthropocene’s urgent reality, proposing a hybrid landscape where human, animal, and mineral interweave—a profoundly realistic vision. Just as human activities transform Earth’s geological structure, Armour considers her practice an intervention in the lithosphere and mineral universe.

In a sense, her work re-engages with the utopian program of 16th and 17th-century Wunderkammer (cabinets of curiosities). These presentations subtly bridged natural forms, ancient sculpture, figurative art, and mechanical objects, with stone statues connecting geology to prehistory, and automata reflecting painters' quest to simulate life. Armour’s work similarly presents a continuum: from metabolism to scanning, steatite to pig’s blood, latex to marble, her sculpture embodies molecular flux.

dana fiona armour

 Installation view, All Too Human, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, France, 2021.

dana fiona armour

Installation view, All Too Human, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, France, 2021.

dana fiona armour

Donatien, 2021

Silicone, pigments, animal blood powder, stainless steel

111 x 27 x 41 cm (43 3/4 x 10 5/8 x 16 1/8 in.)

dana fiona armour

Excroissance #9, 2021

Steatite, steel

31 x 18 x 13 cm (12 1/4 x 7 1/8 x 5 1/8 in.)

dana fiona armour

Installation view, All Too Human, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, France, 2021.

From the text of the exhibition It takes

two, by Hugo Vitrani, 2019.

Dana-Fiona Armour has reduced herself to

1.45 meter circles, presented in the classic

triptych form, between minimalism and

sacredness. Each circular sculpture

embodies the extent of the artist’s skin

declined in latex and stretched over a raw

steel structure, between warrior trophy (the

body of the enemy), mummification and

tanned animal skin. “This piece came from

the desire to know my volume and reduce

myself to a surface, a figure,” explains the

artist who cites the body art of the 1970s and

Viennese Actionism among his references.

Falsely emaciated, Dana-Fiona Armour lays

herself flat and deploys the radiance of her

body freed from organs, forms, blood, bones

and flesh. So this new synthetic and smooth

skin could evoke the photoshopped ones of

the fashion world but also the texture of the

hologram bodies or those wich are deployed

in the virtual reality. So many bodies without

bodies.

dana fiona armour , poush

Dana-Fiona's Studio at Poush Manifesto, 2020.

dana fiona armour , Poush

Dana-Fiona's Studio at Poush Manifesto, 2020.

dana fiona armour , Poush

Portrait of the Artist at her studio at POUSH , 2020

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