Artist Shula Singer Arbel talks about the piece she created based on the research of Marilena Melas, who studies renal cancer. (Photo/Ricardo Carrasco III)
Medical research inspires art
Artists are paired with researchers to produce fascinating work displayed on the USC Health Sciences Campus
Artist & Researcher, an exhibition at Hoyt Gallery on USC’s Health Sciences Campus, shows what happens when 14 artists are paired with 14 USC biomedical researchers.
Barbara Kolo’s abstract representation of the kidney hangs beside one of the images from the lab of Andy McMahon that inspired the work. Andrea Bogdan’s glass panels depicts a cartilage cell that plays a key role in repairing bone injuries, according to research from the lab of Francesca Mariani. And Cybele Rowe’s white sculpture “Tau” evokes proteins that can malfunction in the brain, along with less tangible aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, studied at the lab of Tiffany Chow. Other artworks focus on research about diseases ranging from melanoma to multiple sclerosis.
Other artist-researcher pairs commented on the parallel processes of scientific curiosity and artistic inquiry, and reflected on how their collaborations changed the ways they both conceptualized their work.
Artist & Researcher is the latest in a series of exhibitions curated by Ted Meyer, artist-in-residence at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. It runs through Aug. 15.