1995
16” x 48”
Human blood, acrylic gel medium, wax crayon on sandblasted glass in black metal frame.
Bloodlines
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DNA
Bloodlines
Bloodlines (1995) initiates an inquiry into the body as a site of genetic information and personal archive, challenging the boundaries between scientific objectivity and intimate identity.
The work is grounded in a direct, material collaboration with colleague and artist Meg Higgins. Commissioned for an exhibition celebrating her 50th birthday, the piece utilizes 5 vials of Meg’s own blood, transforming a visceral biological sample into an index of her identity and lineage.
The artwork is a glass horizontal rectangle cut to the same format as an oversized laboratory slide, divided into two equal parts. On one half, the blood is used to meticulously render a female karyotype of 23 chromosome pairs. This ordered genetic visualization, sealed beneath clear gel medium, is set in tension against the left half, which is sandblasted to reveal the word “Bloodlines.” This clear text casts a shadow that emphasizes the work’s thematic focus on inheritance and the unseen biological forces that define us. The chromosome pairs, also casting their own paired shadows, are numbered and the sex chromosomes labeled with black wax pencil, rooting the artistic mark-making in the clinical language of genetic science.