Lens on Life, a traveling art exhibition inspired by cell division, premiered this month at the Federica Schiavo Gallery in Rome, Italy. The exhibition is rooted in the MitoSys Project, an EU-funded research consortium composed of labs from eight different European countries, all dedicated to understanding mitosis from a systems biology perspective. Four scientists from the consortium, Tony Hyman, Kim Nasmyth, Jan-Michael Peters, and Melina Schuh, were paired with artists to have interactive dialogues and bring new perspectives to the subject of mitosis. The artists, Lucy & Jorge Orta, Shobana Jeyasingh, Ackroyd & Harvey, and Rob Kesseler, traveled to the scientists’ cities and laboratories, and also brought the scientists back to their own studios to foster open and creative conversations about science and artistic metaphors. _Lens on Life* features the four works of art that resulted from these meetings, as well as a documentary of the whole process, Meeting of the Minds.
Lens on Life will be in Rome until August 28, 2014. Next year the exhibition will move to Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London (January 27-February 27), and finally to the University Museum of Heidelberg University in Germany (March 16-April 28).