Mural by Women, Mitochondrial Wall

xx RESIDENCIES

Argentina and Slovenia / 2016 
Work in progress

We are hosting artist Laura Olalde from Argentina, who invites you to participate in creating a collective wall painting.

Walls in cities can be the voice of their inhabitants. As cell walls, they are alive and they express the changes in their environment. Mitochondrial Wall is an open and permeable project for the women in Ljubljana and it consists of the realization of a collective mural painting representing a “molecular landscape” with a focus on mitochondria, an organelle that has its own genetic information that passes through maternal heritage.

In the 80’s, studies in mitochondrial DNA done by Alan Wilson, a geneticist from the University of California, determined that the first humans on Earth came from Africa, from a unique African mother. These conclusions were polemical because they touched upon matters such as Identity and Phylogenetics. This molecule, called the “mitochondrial Eve” is fundamental for maternal filiation, because 100% of DNA comes from the maternal line this way, a faster path to reaching the common origins of Homo sapiens. At this point, and by immersing ourselves in this complex molecular landscape that can be read as a map of origins as well, we can reflect on the concepts of life and identity that have changed facing the new techno-scientific paradigm, with the transition from biology to molecular biology.

The Concept of Life is now circumscribed not only in our bodies but in our molecules, a new political device around which the biopolitical practices are now organized. 

As a metaphor of mitochondrial heritage, the mural action is proposed as the desire for of a symbolic legacy between women who live in and visit the City of Ljubljana from one to other edition of the City of Women Festival, that the Mural by Women painting can grow as a meeting point activity in future editions of the Festival.

In English.

Free of charge.

Finishing with an opening of the mural with which we are also closing the 22nd Festival of Contemporary Arts - City of Women.

Production and Organization: City of Women, KUD Mreža, Gallery Alkatraz, A Gesamtkunstwerk Metelkova/Urban art project.
Supported by Fondo Metropolitano.