IndiGROW
Dr. Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong and Dr. Callie Chappell
Flask, 2024. Bioengineered yeast, DMSO, indigoidine dye, platform, liquid culture media, glass flask; 12 x 19 in. Jeans, 2024. Bioengineered yeast, indigoidine dye, denim, clothing rack; 45 x 54 in. Dying Indigo, 2024. Bioengineered yeast, indigoidine dye, microcentrifuge tubes, tabletop greenhouse, glass flask, printed cards; 30 x 60 in. Lil Lab, 2024. Glass cabinet, cyanotype papers, foldscopes, zines, stickers; 16 x 14 x 61 in. Cushions, 2024. Fabric, indigoidine dye, Inidgofera plant leaves, chemically synthesized reduced indigo; 24 x 24 in.
Presented as part of Emergence: Art from Life
Modern society straddles two worlds: the biotic (alive) and abiotic (unalive). Biotic life is all around us: the gardens we enjoy, the food we eat, the wood we craft into furniture, and the organisms that form the basis of countless medicines. Yet Western culture has continually pushed us to perceive the world around us as abiotic and unalive. We sterilize our homes and box urban trees into miles of concrete: even nature is carefully curated for consumption. The forces of industrialization, capitalism, and consumerism have created distance between us and the living organisms upon which we depend. This disconnection has given rise to an “abiotic society”, which manifests in engineering biology itself, where now more than ever, living things are manipulated to behave like machines - being made unalive.
For Emergence, we present indigo dyeing as a bridge between the biotic and abiotic. We display indigo-like dye (indigoidine), produced by bioengineered yeast.
Indigo dye is used in countless dyeing practices from around the world including shibori, uqnatu, adire alabare, gorm ceilteach, cumbi, pha sin, haint blue, and denim(1). During the Industrial Revolution, Western demand drove indigo production, exploiting enslaved people brought to the Americas and British-ruled India (2, 3). Plant-derived indigo dyes were an invaluable global commodity until the 1890s, when natural cultivation of the indigo plant was replaced by chemical synthesis of “artificial indigo.” However, this synthetic process still relies on toxic chemicals, disproportionately impacting the Global South (4).
In an effort to produce more environmentally-friendly indigo, scientists have engineered microbes to produce indigoidine, a dye similar to indigo. This bioengineered dye offers an alternative to chemical synthesis (5). However, by moving genes from one organism to another, scientists have turned microbes such as bacteria and yeast into living, breathing machines. These engineered biotic entities now toil in industrial bioreactors on gleaming factory floors and die by the trillions for our gain.
What are the ramifications of considering organisms as machines? Abioticizing microbes—considering microbes as machines instead of organisms with intrinsic value— justifies their exploitation, not dissimilarly to how dehumanization justifies colonial exploitation. In fact, viewing living beings as abiotic can be a colonial tool used to exploit.
By merging the abiotic with the biotic, engineering biology also has the opportunity to reverse this perspective by centering, respecting, and giving dignity to all organisms. Engineering biology can bioticize engineering, inviting new consideration of living organisms as being worthy of reciprocal relationships of care and collaboration, rather than merely tools of increasing industrialization.
Now that we are engineering biology, we must choose: will life become abiotic, or can we create a future where society becomes alive again?
— Dr. Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong and Dr. Callie Chappell
1. Indigo from Indigofera spp.: Historical and Cultural Overview. EDIS EP642.
2. J. C. Splitstoser, T. D. Dillehay, J. Wouters, A. Claro, Sci Adv. 2, e1501623 (2016).
3. S. Magazine, A. Sidder, Earliest Evidence of Indigo Dye Found at Ancient Peruvian Burial Site. Smithsonian Magazine. (2016)
4. A. Freeser, Indigo in the Atlantic World. Oxford Bibliographies (2023)
5. M. Wehrs et al., Green Chem. 21, 3394 – 3406 (2019).
Image credit: (Thumbnail) Dr. Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong and Dr. Callie Chappell, (Gallery) Carson Davis Brown
IndiGROW was featured in Emergence: Art from Life, an exhibition at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, as part of PST ART. Presented by Getty, PST ART returned in September 2024 with Art & Science Collide, a regional event exploring the connections between art and science, past and present.
Thank you PST ART; JACCC; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles for your support of Emergence.