"it looked like your BioSuit"

Abstract

“it looked like your BioSuit” is a speculative worldbuilding project that I have been working on over the past two years. This body of figurative ceramic sculptures tells the story of the Wearers, a fictional community who, following an ecological catastrophe of near-mythological origins, survived their new, treacherous landscape through two pivotal adaptations. Through the consumption of plentiful terrestrial macro-algae they developed the ability to photosynthesize, and they created the BioSuits: living protective garments made of a symbiosis of fungi, moss, lichen, and algae. This body of work is supported by research in mycology, agronomy, and ecology, to name a few. Much of the worldbuilding is based in agriculture, as I grew up on a grain farm in rural Manitoba. The idea of symbiosis and collaboration is a recurring theme in the work and the written text that accompanies it. Though it may be presented as a slightly optimistic view of the future of our species, if all we ever see in speculative works is pain and suffering how could we possibly dare to hope for a better future?