Karina Fernandez

BIO DIFFRACTIONS

Exhibition by Karina Fernandez

curated by Guadalupe Aldrete

opening: 17.09.2024 at 19:00

exhibition duration: 17. – 28.09.2024

brunch + artist talk: 21.09.2024 at 10:00

More visiting dates on request: eindorf.kunstraum@gmail.com

Free entrance

Karina Fernandez’s artistic journey, shaped since 2015 by her research on banana peel fibre, explores environmental sustainability and its direct correlation with global ecocides, including both, the disappearance of plant and animal species.
In “Bio Diffractions“,* Fernandez expands her work by incorporating bioplastics alongside banana peels, emphasising the untapped potential of sustainable technologies. Here the artist continues to critique historical and current issues of exploitation, consumption and pollution.

Image credits: TschernerKF and Karina Fernandez

Karina Fernandez’s artistic journey, deeply informed by her research on banana peels since 2015, has significantly shaped her exploration of environmental sustainability and ecocides. Karina utilises these peels to address issues of consumption, waste, and pollution, laying the groundwork for her current exhibition, “Bio Diffractions.”**

In “Bio Diffractions,” Karina introduces bioplastics alongside banana peels, furthering her investigation into sustainable alternatives. The artworks critically examine the neglected potential of sustainable technologies, emphasising their crucial role in addressing the planet’s urgent environmental challenges. By integrating bioplastics made from materials like animal gelatine, she underscores the importance of reimagining discarded resources as key players in ecological sustainability.

The installation „Wasted Away,“ also featured in the exhibition, showcases a soluble sculpture made from banana peels, water, glass, and steel. This work highlights the potential of banana peel fibre to absorb heavy metals, such as uranium, from polluted water, presenting a low-cost and practical solution that underscores the untapped value of banana peel waste. Additionally, the slow biological decomposition of a human sacral bone, cast from banana peel fiber, is juxtaposed with rapidly evolving eco-tech advancements. As the sacrum gradually dissolves in water, it powerfully symbolises the current environmental crisis and its inevitable consequences for humanity.

Building on the ideas introduced throughout Karina’s research, “Bio Diffractions” represents the next phase of Karina’s artistic practice. Her new series of sculptures and objects further address the environmental destruction and the potential of discarded materials. While banana peels function as a synecdoche for the historical and ongoing exploitation of human and natural resources, the introduction of bioplastics reflects Karina’s commitment to exploring sustainable alternatives.

In “Bio Diffractions,” Karina Fernandez sharpens her critique of the neglected potential of sustainable technologies, highlighting their essential role in tackling the planet’s urgent environmental challenges; it’s also a reminder that humans are not immune to the ecological crises we have created. Through this exhibition, Karina not only critiques exploitation but also envisions a more sustainable future, where innovative uses of materials like banana peels and bioplastics could help alleviate environmental crises.

** Diffraction: the behaviour of light that amplifies a specimen’s or substance’s visibility under a microscope lens.

BIO
Karina Fernandez is an artist based in Vienna, Austria. She was born
in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has lived successively in Riga, Münich,
Zagreb and Vienna since 2001.
She exhibited in Buenos Aires, Vienna, Munich, Chongqing, Rijeka and

Venice, in museums, galleries and art venues like the Biennale di Ven-
ezia, MAK, Künstlerhaus, Augarten Museum, Krinzinger Gallery and Or-
ganhaus Gallery in Chongqing, China.

She holds degrees in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and a
Master in Visual Arts from the University of the Arts, both from Buenos
Aires, Argentina, as well as a Master in Digital Arts from the University
of Applied Arts from Vienna, Austria.
Her pieces elapse on the verge of bio and multimedia art through
site-specific, kinetic, interactive installations and urban interventions.

She selects found objects, discarded materials, biologic waste, over-
looked characters, and unlikely heroes as the subjects of her activities,

opening up a space through her praxis where they get a voice and a
body in new flesh.