Recent Newsletter: Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad and more

Read my most recent newsletter about "Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard" and the upcoming exhibit, "Charting the World: Subjective MapMaking" at the Suffolk University.

Library
Deaccessioned card catalog cabinets from the Harvard Fine Arts Library,
Petri dishes, laser cut vellum, lab tapes, and various lab tools in the drawers.
2016 - 2017

Currently installed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Celebrating Art and Science at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

My work is being included in this group exhibition featuring works by past and current Artists-in-Residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. I'm happy to be finally showing my work at the place where I created them during my Artist-in-Residence. I'm showing an installation entitled Library and several pieces from Inscription drawings (translocation of double-stranded passage).

I feel honored to be showing my work in a group of such talented artists, Daniel Kohn, Gupi Ranganathan, Maskull Lasserre, and Lucy Kim.

Broad Institute is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year. This exhibit is a part of their Broad15 celebration. The exhibit is open by appointment only to the public. It is free, but must register on Eventbrite to make appointments.

Artists talk and reception is scheduled for January 14, 5-7pm at the Broad Institute, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA. It'll be held on the 2nd floor connector area where the exhibit is. It should be a great event!

Upcoming solo exhibition, "Excerpts" at Babson College

I’m pleased to announce my upcoming solo exhibition, Excerpts at the Hollister Gallery at Babson College. The exhibit opens on September 12th. I’m showing a new iteration of my Artist-in-Residence projects at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, as well as two new pieces I have created this summer, including "Untitled (We still want to believe)". These works have never been exhibited, so I'm very excited to show my new work.

Excerpts (solo exhibition)
September 12 - November 1, 2019
Opening Reception & Artist Talk: Thursday, September 12, 5-7pm
Hollister Gallery at the Sorenson Center for the Arts
Babson College
231 Forest Street, Wellesley, MA
Free and open to the public. *Reservation is encouraged.
Visit Facebook Event page

Excerpts, a new iteration of Naoe Suzuki’s Artist-in-Residence projects at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, is an exploration of interconnectedness between knowledge and belief in medical science. Suzuki incorporates magic spells from the Edwin Smith Papyrus, from 1,600 BC in Egypt, the earliest known medical papyrus to include prognosis. She extracts and sequences these archaic spells—indecipherable to the untrained eye—as formal visual elements, and invites viewers to read the unreadable. The artist traced the magic spells by hand, recalling the scribes’ handiwork in the papyrus, but used laser cutting to cut out these spells.

Suzuki contemplates our ancient convictions about medicine in a time when science, medicine, and technology are all accelerating at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. Bringing forth a forgotten treatise to the present, she asks us what is legitimate, what we may have lost, and what we still believe.

Watch the video about Broad Institute Artist-in-Residence.

Lost and Found opens at the Boston Arts Academy

From October 5 – November 15, 2017, the Boston Arts Academy will present Lost and Found, an exhibition by Naoe Suzuki.

Suzuki will be presenting Lost and Found, the second installment of a three-part project, completed during her tenure as artist in residence at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Observations made during her appointment inside this dynamic biomedical research institute led Suzuki to investigate what has been lost in the history of science and medicine while making progress — eventually leading her to the Edwin Smith Papyrus, the oldest medical textbook from 1,600 BC, which includes prognosis for the first time in recorded history. On the verso, magic spells were introduced as medical treatment in ancient Egypt.

Fascinated with this information, Suzuki created a number of works incorporating the images of magic spells along with the current scientific information including the paper on the Human Genome Project published in 2001, and numerous writings she traced from the whiteboards around the Broad Institute.

Suzuki explores the interconnectedness of meaning between knowledge and belief, bringing forth forgotten beliefs—the magic spells that were mostly written on the verso side of the papyrus—and asks us: What is legitimate? What might we have lost? What do we still believe? and What do we hope to find? These magic spells, which are undecipherable to untrained eye, operate as a visual form, in a similar way to technical scientific writings that are difficult to understand to a layperson.

Courtesy of the Broad Institute, Suzuki includes decontaminated lab equipment in the exhibit. Suzuki also uses card catalog cabinets, deaccessioned from the Harvard Fine Arts Library, to hold a collection of petri dishes that contain laser cut pieces of magic spells.

At the Boston Arts Academy (BAA,) Suzuki will work inside the gallery and spend nearly a month as the artist in residence, continuing to explore the concept of “lost and found” with students. A manual typewriter is set up on the 4^th floor with a question on the wall, “What have you lost that you want to find again?” The artist asks students to think about this question and to respond by typing on a manual typewriter, which itself is a lost device no longer commonly used.

The exhibit, Lost and Found will open on Thursday, October 5^th. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 12^th from 5-7 pm. The art gallery is open to the public during school hours. The Artist-in-Residence program at BAA was made possible through the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust.

Lost and Found

Boston Arts Academy

174 Ipswich Street, Boston, MA. Tel: 617.635.6470

School hours:

Monday through Friday • 9am - 4pm (closed October 9 & November 10)

Boston Arts Academy (BAA) is Boston’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts, serving 450 students who reflect the diversity of Boston’s neighborhoods. 

Related exhibitions:

Stories retold, the first installment of Suzuki’s project completed during her appointment as the Broad Institute’s artist in residence, is installed in the institute’s main lobby through December 21, 2017.

Naoe Suzuki: Stories retold

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA
Extended through December 21, 2017

Suzuki’s third installment of her project from her Broad Institute residency will be exhibited at the Cambridge School of Weston’s Red Wall Gallery.

With eyes open: Dreamcatchers (solo show) 
Cambridge School of Weston

Red Wall Gallery
Weston, MA
October 30 - December 20, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 11 • 2-5pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, November 18 • 1-2pm

Stories retold: Artist-in-Residence Exhibit at Broad Institute

Stories retold: Artist-in-Residence Exhibit

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

415 Main Street

Cambridge, MA

April 18 – August 24, 2017

The concept of the passage of time as a subject for inquiry is at the core of Naoe Suzuki’s exploration in the work currently on public view in the main lobby at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Weaving past and present together, Suzuki contemplates data mining, knowledge, history, and our belief systems. Stories retold, an exhibit of selected works completed after being selected as the Broad Institute’s fifth artist-in-residence (video), reflects her fascination with, and observation of the scientific community where she has been immersed since April of 2016.

In the light-filled lobby of the Broad Institute’s Main Street building, Suzuki has installed nearly 200 brightly-colored decals on the floor and stairs. Close examination reveals that each circular shape contains images similar to organisms one might observe in a microscope. The decals snake around to form three circular shapes on the floor, then trail up the stairs to the mezzanine level.

This site-specific installation, Stories retold, examines the ancient roots of our belief systems around the treatment of disease. Suzuki combines and overlays images of magic spells she traced from a copy of the Edwin Smith papyrus—the oldest medical textbook to include prognosis in the history of civilization. The papyrus is from ancient Egypt, 1600 BC, and the spells are written in hieratic, a form of ancient Egyptian writing. These magic spells were used as medical treatments in the ancient world. Suzuki traced the magic spells by hand and made them into drawings first, then she made laser cut versions on vellum paper. Suzuki then created the “microscopic” views of ancient magic spells by scanning and editing the laser cut drawings in Photoshop.

The shape on the floor was inspired by the artistic rendering of the Congo River by Stephen Gire, then a Broad Institute researcher who worked in the Congo during the Ebola outbreak. In that project, Gire digitally rendered the river to form the shape of the Ebola virus in the forest suggesting its ancient origin, which dates back to between 16 and 23 million years ago.

Suzuki contemplates our ancient beliefs about medicine in a time when science, medicine, and technology are all accelerating at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. Bridging together the layers of history, she explores the interconnectedness of meaning between knowledge and belief, bringing forth forgotten beliefs—the magic spells that were mostly written on the verso side of the papyrus—and asks us what is legitimate, what we may have lost, and what we still believe.

On the mezzanine level, a large horizontal scroll drawing titled, Unapologetic work of a data parasite and a digital slide presentation, Field Notes, bring the viewers into the present.

Using as source material the artist’s tracings of the writings on the whiteboards at the Broad, Suzuki retraced her original tracings— then enlarged, reduced, repeated and sliced as she saw fit to create the composition. It was composed in a flow, following the energy that she felt from the original marks.

"Unapologetic work of a data parasite"
45"x 216", Mineral pigment, gouache, color pencil, and graphite on paper
2016

Field Notes juxtaposes the scanned images of traced writings from the whiteboards, which were further edited in Photoshop, with bits of overheard conversation. The piece subtly critiques the challenges of data sharing in a scientific community, while shedding light onto scientists’ genuine enthusiasm and joy as well as frustrations. It is composed as “a day in the life” of a scientist.

“As an artist, the scientists’ challenges and hard work resonated with me. Most of the time, being an artist or a scientist involves a lot of hard work. We often occupy uncertain space, trying to figure out a path to discovery or creation. It is in this dark place where we struggle, but simultaneously we must feel comfortable being in this place.”

Still from "Field Notes"

In all of the work presented at the Broad Institute, Suzuki’s gesture of tracing seems to honor the original manuscripts or writings. Her deliberately slow process of transferring these writings is a meditation on our progress. “Scholars believe that in ancient Egypt when the Edwin Smith papyrus was written, the same content was copied over many times, over the span of 200 or 300 years. This means that the methods of diagnosing and treating patients did not change significantly for a couple of hundred years,” said Suzuki. “Look at what’s happening now in our time. The sequencing of the human genome was completed a little over fifteen years ago, and we’re now talking about precision medicine. Things have been moving at exponential speed in science, medicine, and technology in the last few decades.”

Suzuki’s artistic practice allows us pause for a moment in the world where everything seems to be moving fast.

About Naoe Suzuki

Naoe Suzuki is a visual artist based in Waltham, MA. Suzuki received an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1997. She has been a recipient of many grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. Watch the video to learn more about her project at the Broad Institute.

About  the Broad Institute Artist-in-Residence program

The Broad's artist-in-residence program lies at the intersection of science and art. The program allows revolutionary scientists and forward-thinking artists to work, communicate, and learn together to benefit both science and art, spurring the creative thinking that drives innovation. Naoe Suzuki is the Institute’s fifth artist-in-residence. Learn more about their art, their perspectives, and their experience at the Broad.

Stories retold: site-specific installation at the Broad Institute

I recently installed a site-specific installation titled “Stories retold” for the Artist in Residence Program’s exhibit at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

This installation combines images of magic spells that were traced from a copy of the Edwin Smith papyrus—the first medical textbook to include prognosis in the history of civilization. The papyrus is from ancient Egypt, 1600 BC. The script was written in hieratic, an ancient Egyptian form of writing. Most of the magic spells were written on the verso side of the papyrus. The images in this piece are constructed from traced magic spells that were used as treatments in ancient world.

The traced magic spells were made into drawings first, and then laser cut on vellum paper. The laser cut drawings on vellum paper were scanned and edited in Photoshop. The images on each decal contain ancient magic spells for various diseases. The sizes of the circles were based on three different sizes of petri dishes.

The shape on the floor was inspired by the artistic rendering of the Congo River by Stephen Gire, a researcher who worked in Congo during the Ebola outbreak. The river in his photograph takes shape of Ebola virus in the forest suggesting the ancient origin of the virus.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of words and beliefs in the past year, and thinking about connections to our ancient roots.

In this site-specific installation, I’m examining our ancient beliefs in medicine—what we have passed on for generations, what we have lost, what we have forgotten, what we have learned, and what we still believe.

"Stories retold" 

Site-specific installation

196 decals

2016 - 2017

“Stories retold” and other works will be on view in the lobby and mezzanine at the Broad Institute until the end of summer. The lobby and mezzanine are accessible to the public during the business hours.

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

415 Main Street

Cambridge, MA

Hours: Monday – Friday, 8am – 7pm

Data parasite? Collaborating at the Intersection of Art and Science

As the Artist in Residence at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, I was honored to have participated in a conversation with Todd Golub, Chief Scientific Officer, and Director of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute. This conversation was a part of HUB Week events and hosted by Catalyst Conversations in partnership with Broad Institute. 

I enjoyed our conversation, and I was especially thrilled to hear Todd talking about the recent controversy on what is called "data parasite" in regards to my activities of tracing the writings around the Broad Institute. Sounds like I'm one of them.

Here's the video from the talk.

HUB Week Event:

COLLABORATING AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART AND SCIENCE

September 27^th at 3:00pm

Conversation: 3:00-4:00pm

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142

HUBweek is a creative festival that celebrates innovation at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Founded by The Boston Globe, Harvard University, MIT and Mass General Hospital, HUBweek is a first-of-its-kind civic collaboration that brings together the most creative and inventive minds making an impact in Boston and around the world.