Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno’s practice is informed by concepts linking art, life science, and the social sciences. Enmeshed in the junction of these worlds, his floating sculptures, community projects, and immersive installations propose sensory solidarity with the planet through a social, mental, and environmental ecology of practice. For more than a decade, he has been imagining a world free from carbon, extractivism, capitalism, patriarchy and fossil fuel - or what he calls CECPF- that inflames some forms of life. In an unorthodox collaboration with cosmic webs, the air, spider/webs and indigenous communities, energies converge in a new practice of solidarity. In our era of climate emergency—when ecosystems are at risk—Saraceno’s work, deepening our understanding of environmental justice and interspecies cohabitation, carried out through the artist’s initiated projects Aerocene and Arachnophilia.

Saraceno’s profound interest in spiders and their webs led to the formation of the Arachnophilia. Arachnophilia is a not-for-profit, interdisciplinary spider/web research community that builds on innovations arising from Saraceno’s past collaborative research into spider/web architectures, materials, modes of vibrational signaling and behavior. Through this community, Arachnophilia explores concepts and ideas related to spiders and webs across multiple scientific and theoretical disciplines, including vibrational communication, biomateriomics, architecture and engineering, animal ethology, nonhuman philosophy, anthropology, biodiversity/conservation, sound studies and music. The Arachnomancy App was launched on the occasion of the 2019 Venice Biennale and in the context of the sixth mass extinction. Through this app, users are encouraged to notice and document spider webs they encounter in both wild and urban spaces—becoming engaged and curious Citizen Scientists as they navigate the spaces around them.

In the past two decades Saraceno has furthermore collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute, the Nanyang Technological University, the Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum London. He has lectured in institutions worldwide, and directed the Institute of Architecture‐related Art (IAK) at Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany (2014–2016); and held residencies at Centre National d’Études Spatiales (2014–2015), MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (2012–ongoing) and Atelier Calder (2010), among others. Saraceno has most recently been exhibited in: Event Horizon: Tomás Saraceno at Cisternerne, Copenhagen (2020); Aria, at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2020); the 58th International Art Exhibition ‐ La Biennale di Venezia, May You Live In Interesting Times; and carte blanche á Tomás Saraceno: ON AIR at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018). His work is housed in international collections including the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nationalgalerie, and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.