The Trans-Organic Unity

Placeholder from October 10 to December 9, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

Danni O’Brien, Alabaster Apple Apparatus (2023)

Danni O’Brien’s Alabaster Apple Apparatus appears to almost writhe on the floor of the Stamp Gallery as an alien, yet inexplicably familiar form. A mechanical device of uncertain function serves as the torso, with tubular branches of gray metal and foam terminating in bulbous, green nodes. These terminal organs are gourds, cast in wax made of melted-down, second-hand candles. Certain components even seem to be branching outward from the central body, assimilating new gourds into the post-gourd technological hybrid.

Danni O’Brien, Alabaster Apple Apparatus (2023)

O’Brien describes their use of wax-cast gourds as a “stand-in for bodies” in their work. The gourds which donated their form to the wax are the organic, human component of O’Brien’s cyborg. O’Brien’s aim is to “push the material gaps between the source object and its pseudo-duplication” by emphasizing the properties of the duplication material which are distinct from the source object. The wax mixtures take on otherworldly greens and silvers which impart the gourds with an uncharacteristically synthetic appearance akin to toxic waste in a sci-fi film. Through their role as proxies for human bodies, these unnatural elements of the gourds and their insertion into the greater machine-creature express O’Brien’s idea of trans-organic unity.

Trans-organic unity refers to a point of technological evolution in which technology becomes integrated with a living organism, resulting in a new form of life which transcends both the organic and the artificial. By uniting disparate materials, some found, some made, O’Brien creates sculptures which envision these future-beings. Yet, despite representing a transcendent form of evolution, O’Brien’s pieces are remarkably fragile. In a discussion about their work, O’Brien emphasized the importance of precarity in their creative process, existence, and vision of the future. O’Brien embraces the instability of their art, from the delicate nature of wax to the haphazard balance of the piece’s metal components. Even in a technologically augmented lifeform, the inherent impermanence of the body remains; O’Brien reveals beauty in the precarity of life in our present and hypothetical futures. 

Placeholder will be on view at the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park, through December 9, 2023.

Quotes taken from Danni O’Brien’s artist talk at Stamp Gallery 

---