The Cell
Lokal med föremål från utställningen Borderland.
Lokal med föremål från utställningen Borderland.

Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy, The Body is a Big Place, 2011-2013.

Borderlands is the first exhibition to be shown in The Cell and comprises three works by the Australian artist Helen Pynor, with fellow Australian artist Peta Clancy a co-author of one of the works. 

Borderlands brings together three major installations by artist Helen Pynor and her collaborators: The Body is a Big Place (by Pynor and collaborating artist Peta Clancy), The End is a Distant Memory, and 93% Human. What connects these three works is their focus on philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones of existence.  

All three works were the result of long-term, in-depth collaborations with scientists and clinicians, in which scientific methodologies and technologies, such as organ perfusion, tissue culture, microscopy and DNA sequencing, were deployed in the service of the works’ philosophically framed explorations. 

Collaborations with other creative practitioners such as sound artists, composers, performance makers, choreographers and videographers were also integral to the realisation of the works, enabling the works to activate multiple senses in exhibition viewers and support the evocation of the complex themes being explored. 

The exhibition will continue until the end of April 2025

  

The Body is a Big Place, Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy.

In The Body is a Big Place the artists explore the intersubjective nature of organ transplantation, and what it might mean to receive an intimate part of the body, such as a vital organ, from a donor whom the recipient will never know. The work also explores the ambiguous thresholds between life and death, made explicit in organ donation, as organs obtained from deceased donors live on in the body of another.  

Kyckling som ligger på ett bord där den saknar fjädrar nedre delen av kroppen.

The End is a Distant Memory also explores the ambiguous boundary between life and death. Pynor extracted and cultured living chicken cells from fresh chicken meat she bought at a supermarket, demonstrating that forms of ‘life’ persists well into what we consider to be ‘death.’

She further extended this exploration to look at the process by which ‘chicken’ becomes ‘meat’, which then becomes ‘human’ when ingested and absorbed by human bodies. In another aspect of the work Pynor collaborated with people who have had lucid near-death experiences (NDEs) – experiences of conscious thoughts and perceptions whilst being ‘clinically dead’ – further complicating the boundary between what we regard as ‘living’ and ‘non-living’. 

Två människor, en kvinna och en man, som andas i ett rör för att symbolisera hur luft rör sig mellan människor i rum

93% Human explores the boundary between the human and non-human, using DNA that we exhale in our breath, and inhale from others. The work makes explicit the multi-species nature of being ‘human’ and celebrates our intimate exchanges with human and non-human others, recognising ‘contamination’ as a necessary condition of being alive. 

Två människor, en kvinna och en man, som andas i ett rör för att symbolisera hur luft rör sig mellan människor i rum

Helen Pynor, 93% Human, 2023.

Pynor employs various media, such as installation, photography, video, sculpture, and performance, blending scientific methods with philosophical themes. She collaborates extensively with scientific and clinical institutions, as well as individuals whose experiences resonate with her work’s themes

Kyckling som ligger på ett bord där den saknar fjädrar nedre delen av kroppen.

Helen Pynor, The End is s Distant Memory, 2016.

This is the first time Helen Pynor’s work has been exhibited in Sweden, and the first time the three works in this exhibition, “The Body is a Big Place” (a collaboration with artist Peta Clancy), “93% Human” and “The End is a Distant Memory” have been shown together.

Helen Pynor