Bloodlines

Rohini Devasher, artist

born 1978

Bloodlines, 2009

Where object was made: Asia

Material/technique: single-channel video

Credit line: Museum purchase: Helen Foresman Spencer Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2010.0066.01.b

Not on display

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The moving image installation Bloodlines by Rohini Devasher exists at the boundary between biological evolution and speculation. Simulating cellular mitosis of imagined microbial organisms, the work pulsates with primordial life. Clustered in the center of the digital print are seven parent creatures charted by connecting lines with their offspring. The ancestral chart is ringed by a circular rendition of the three-domain system—a biological classification that divides cellular life into three distinct categories.
Each of the “mother” creatures in Bloodlines was generated from the chaos of a feedback loop resulting from a video camera and monitor, and further manipulated with kaleidoscope-like mirrors. The resulting image simulates the appearance of a cellular microorganism. In turn, each of these primordial mother creatures produces a line of descendants that are charted in the accompanying inkjet print, forming bloodlines.

Exhibition Label:
"Cryptograph: An Exhibition for Alan Turing," Mar-2012, Stephen Goddard
Using mirrors and video feedback, Devasher created seven “mother” creatures (seen in the center of the composition) that were in turn used to spawn related families of biomorphic creatures. This large digital print charts these
relationships. In the accompanying video, each creature is 19 projected with a radioactive glow on a black field. Devasher has been consumed with fashioning a universe of biomorphic entities in her prints and large-scale drawings. She calls the work “a warehouse full of impossible monsters,” an idea derived from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The
Blind Watchmaker). In this work, Devasher dares to imagine a world of possibilities that may or may not exist, providing a genetic sequence through her artistic practice. The light radiating lines seen in the background of
Devasher’s print describe a circular rendition of the “three-domain system” that organizes the evolutionary tree of life into three kingdoms on the basis of genetic similarities and the sophistication of cellular structure, as in the rendering below: