Fall 2025
By  Katharine Shilcutt

The sculptures breathe. The paintings undulate. The walls, in parts, are blooming with moss.

Step into “Bio Morphe” — the Moody Center for the Arts’ fall 2025 exhibition — and the line between nature and art begins to ripple. On view Sept. 5 through Dec. 20, the group show gathers seven international artists whose work draws from the language of biology: soft forms, cellular structures, synthetic skins. But beyond the visual spectacle, “Bio Morphe” unspools deeper questions about embodiment, illness, identity and our increasingly tangled relationship with science and technology.

“The artists in this exhibition are not simply mimicking organic forms,” said Frauke Josenhans, curator of this fall’s show. “They’re responding to scientific research, working with new materials, even translating lab techniques into art-making. It’s about how we understand our bodies in an age when biology and technology are increasingly entangled.”

The exhibition’s title nods to the term biomorphism, coined in the early 20th century to describe artworks inspired by natural shapes and structures. But while early modernists like Jean Arp or Barbara Hepworth once softened abstraction with biomorphic curves, today’s artists are asking: What happens when nature itself is engineered?

“At the Moody our mission is to connect disparate disciplines through the arts, and in so doing illuminate critical questions shared by artists, scholars and scientists,” said Alison Weaver, the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts. “‘Bio Morphe’ is an exciting exploration of fields ranging from biology and bioengineering to cognitive neuroscience, and we’re eager to invite our guests to be a part of these ever-evolving conversations.”

Art That Touches a Nerve

In “Bio Morphe,” Josenhans uses biomorphism as a conceptual launchpad to highlight new generations of artists that build on earlier engagements with biomorphism — but look at it from a contemporary point of view. “It’s a term with deep roots,” she said, “but this show is about how artists are thinking through biology now, with all the scientific and ethical complexity that entails.”

Anchoring the show are two site-specific installations created for the Moody by Eva Fàbregas and Sui Park. Fàbregas, a Barcelona-based sculptor, produces latex forms that resemble overgrown internal organs: fleshy, deflated, ambiguously alive. Though monumental in scale, her soft exudates seem vulnerable, even tender.

“She makes these shapes that feel both alien and intimately human,” said Josenhans.

Park, in contrast, works with industrial zip ties — thousands of them — woven into biomorphic forms that suggest cellular colonies, fungal blooms or strange marine creatures. Her Microcosm series will occupy the central gallery, media gallery and parts of the building’s exterior, crawling up walls or nesting under eaves.

“These forms are static, but they feel like they’re moving, pulsing,” said Josenhans. “There’s something whimsical and otherworldly about them, but also incredibly precise.”

Park’s installation is deliberately porous, spilling out of the Moody and onto the campus just as Rice’s new Sarofim Hall — which will house the university’s Department of Art — opens next door. “With so many students passing by, I love that they’ll see these strange, beautiful forms and be drawn in, even if they didn’t plan to visit the Moody that day,” Josenhans said.

Bodies in Question

If the show has a nervous system, it runs through the work of Berenice Olmedo. The Mexico City-based sculptor creates uncanny human forms from prosthetics and orthotics — tools of healing recast as aesthetic materials. Her sculptures challenge the idea of bodily wholeness, instead embracing variation, imperfection and interdependence.

“She works with discarded medical equipment, asking us to rethink what a ‘healthy’ body even is,” Josenhans said. “Who defines that? And who gets left out of that definition?”

Olmedo’s inclusion has also spurred a partnership between the Moody and Rice’s Medical Humanities Research Institute. In November, Olmedo will appear in a public conversation with MHRI director Kirsten Ostherr and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Ricardo Nuila, exploring the intersections of care, disability and the aesthetics of medicine.

“Art and medicine both engage with the human body,” Josenhans said. “Bringing them into conversation feels urgent.”

The Biological Image

In “Bio Morphe,” biology isn’t just a metaphor — it’s a medium. Lucy Kim, an artist and professor at Boston University, uses melanin-producing bacteria as a printmaking material. In fall 2024, Kim was the Moody’s artist-in-residence and deeply engaged with the scientific community during her time at Rice. Working in collaboration with scientific labs, she cultivates the bacteria, then screen-prints with it to create images that are materially alive. 

“I started by trying to make oil paints using the body’s own pigments: melanin,” Kim said. “That led me to working with bacteria, which turned out to be far more interesting than I expected. The bacteria grow, they die, they change the image. There’s a visible biological presence in the work.”

Two of Kim’s melanin prints will be featured in the show, alongside a large oil painting based on a cast of a beach at low tide, a surface pattern that mimics natural rhythms. “Ultimately, all of my work is about how we see things,” she said. “It’s not really about biology itself — it’s about the limits of perception.”

Josenhans considers her central to the curatorial thesis. “Lucy is literally working with biological systems,” Josenhans said. “Her process, her material, her conceptual frame — they all challenge how we process information through the body and brain.”

For Kim, being included in “Bio Morphe” is as meaningful personally as it is professionally. “I’m really excited about the show,” she said. “It brings together such different generations and approaches. Tishan Hsu is one of my art heroes. It’s surreal to be in a show with him.”

Seeing Through the Skin

The idea of bodies in flux — changing, dissolving, reforming — echoes in the paintings of Christina Quarles. Her figures bend and blur, caught between states of being. Gender, race, identity and desire collapse into muscular linework and pools of pastel pigment. Positioned near Fàbregas’s latex forms and Park’s cellular sculptures, Quarles’ work becomes yet another argument for fluidity.

“She dismantles assumptions about the human figure,” Josenhans said. “And she does it with this incredible visual energy.”

Adding another sensory register is the inclusion of Tishan Hsu, whose sculptural reliefs and digital paintings imagine the body fused with technology. His work, created over four decades, feels prescient, capturing a world where the boundary between skin and screen is breaking down.

“He’s been thinking about these issues since the 1980s,” said Josenhans. “His work illustrates a continuity, reminding us that many questions we ask today are not new, but they are becoming more urgent now.”

That historical thread culminates in “The Couple,” a late sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. Cast in aluminum, the entwined figures float midair, simultaneously ethereal and weighty. “Her work feels timeless,” Josenhans said. “And it connects the exhibition back to earlier forms of biomorphism, to the avant-garde and beyond.”

Designing a Living System

Even the graphic design of “Bio Morphe” reflects its theme. The exhibition’s title wall will be partially covered in real moss, with letters that mimic the movement of water. Exhibition labels and graphics, designed by Omnivore, incorporate fluid, cellular shapes. “I wanted the design to feel organic — like the exhibition is alive,” Josenhans said.

The layout itself was developed in collaboration with the Moody exhibition team led by Lee Clark and Nicole Yip, a former Rice architecture student who now assists with exhibition design. “She knows the space intimately,” Josenhans said. “It’s been invaluable to work with someone who speaks that visual language fluently.”

That spirit of collaboration suffuses the entire show. “Artists aren’t working in a vacuum,” Josenhans said. “They’re in conversation — with scientists, with history, with each other and with all of us.”

“Bio Morphe” may be about biology, but it’s also about imagination: about how artists help us see what’s beneath the surface — of our bodies, our technologies, our time.