BioArt

BioArt is a growing area in the Lab’s portfolio of works. It brings forth fresh perspectives, narratives, and innovative concepts that emerge from working with living organisms. We not only take the living world as a source of remarkable inspiration for our work in the arts as well design, but we are also pushing forward (engineering) biology as a new medium of artistic expression. With biology being sustainable by design, this also ushers in an age of environmental friendly solutions on earth and beyond. We are also very curious on how the interaction of man and machine in an age of Generative AI can leverage biology and biological systems.

Through national and international collaborations, we have inspired groundbreaking projects, from storing information in DNA to representing the non-fictional traits of our people in protein structures, merging multiple fields in unprecedented ways.

Our lab was the first in the country to introduce BioArt in 2016 (during its participation in iGEM), engage the public in 2018 to create their own bacterial art (in collaboration with American Society of Microbiology), and organizing a bacterial art exhibition (in collaboration with Peshawar 2.0). The Lab also gained international recognition through its collaboration with Joe Davis – the founding father of the field, with our flagship piece of work amend Baitul Mamur or House of Angels (Sarah Khan and Joe Davis) which earned recognitions at Ars Electronica 2021 (Linz), RSU Anatomy Museum (Riga) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and is now on display at the MIT Museum (Cambridge, MA).

This was followed by a ground-breaking piece of work by the world renowned artist Rashid Rana in collaboration with Dr. Faisal Khan. The installation titled “If you let the moment pass, history may not understand you” was on display at the Chemould Gallery in Mumbai as part of its 60th anniversary exhibition in 2023.

We also take pride in both the annual BioMeetsArt day at the Lab (in Peshawar) and the Demo Day at BNU-SVAD (in Lahore) where students of Dr. Faisal Khan’s hybrid studio elective at the School of Visual Arts and Design (SVAD) present their works every autumn.