Artwork

Hello there. My name is Grace Elhajj and I am the artist who painted the piece titled "One Body." There's a lot of details in this painting, so let's walk through it left to right. We begin in a landfill comprised of waste, plastic bags, tires, water bottles, and they feed into a long red line that spans the canvas. This line represents the human body. As you may notice, it is made dirty with the plastics from the landfill. On the other side of the landfill is a woman painted in blue with tiny fish weaving in and out of her curly hair. This is to represent the spirit of the earth. She looks upon the rest of the canvas with a sorrowful expression, unsure of where the future will lead. I chose to add the fish in her hair because they're one of the primary sources from which we consume microplastics. A young scientist looks up at the woman and makes up her mind to make a change. This is where we see her fellow scientists working together to make a solution for the rest of the community. In the middle of the canvas, after a glimpse at the research being done, we see a scientist shaking hands with the farmer who I've named Rosie. Rosie, shaking hands with the scientist, represents people from different walks of life coming together in an effort to solve our plastic problem. Beside Rosie is little Mikey, her son. Mikey represents the next generation, the ones looking to their elders for direction. Where parents go, children will follow, and the choices we make now will shape the future they grow up in. Just as Mikey looks up to Rosie, so the next generation looks up to you. How will you leave them? At the point where Rosie and the scientists shake hands, the red line, once dirtied with plastics, becomes clean and flows into the remainder of the canvas, passing over the earth, ocean and mountains. These represent the different elements of one world that has been made clean, a future we all could have if we band together. Just as the ocean and mountains are elements of one Earth, so we are all different elements of one people, humanity. Microplastics are not any one person's issue. They impact all of us and we are all responsible for taking action towards a better future. Once again, my name is Grace Elhajj and it's been my joy to walk you through my painting titled "One Body."

I knew that, as an entrepreneurship major, I joined this team to lead entrepreneurship. What I didn’t know was that, as a former music major, I’d go on to lead our artistic efforts as well. Navigating iGEM without the scientific acumen of other team members was initially difficult, as I felt like my contributions were disjoint from the work being done. However, I’ve come to see that engineering, entrepreneurship, and art are far from mutually exclusive; combining these distinct manifestations of the human spirit is how we achieve innovation, success, and beauty. Art allows me to communicate the visceral emotions which lab results or market projections alone can’t express: I’ve been able to capture the power of the HP subteam’s complex microplastics narrative, the thrill of the engineering team’s breakthroughs, and the hope which entrepreneurship inspires. Art is singular in how it can distill the essence of the subject so that anyone can understand and connect with it. Both audially or visually, our team has worked to bring science closer to the world in a deeply human way. We hope to inspire other iGEM teams to explore their own creativity, so that synthetic biology can continue to evolve in how it’s making our world better.

Je savais qu'en tant qu'étudiante en entrepreneuriat, j'avais rejoint cette équipe pour diriger l'entrepreneuriat. Ce que je ne savais pas, c'est qu'en tant qu'ancienne étudiante en musique, j'allais également diriger nos efforts artistiques. Naviguer dans iGEM sans les compétences scientifiques des autres membres de l'équipe était initialement difficile, car j'avais l'impression que mes contributions étaient déconnectées du travail effectué. Cependant, j'en suis venue à comprendre que l'ingénierie, l'entrepreneuriat et l'art sont loin d'être mutuellement exclusifs ; c'est en combinant ces manifestations distinctes de l'esprit humain que nous parvenons à l'innovation, au succès et à la beauté. L'art me permet de communiquer les émotions viscérales que les résultats de laboratoire ou les projections de marché seuls ne peuvent exprimer : j'ai pu capturer la puissance du récit complexe sur les microplastiques de la sous-équipe HP, l'enthousiasme des percées de l'équipe d'ingénierie, et l'espoir qu'inspire l'entrepreneuriat. L'art est unique dans sa capacité à distiller l'essence du sujet de sorte que quiconque puisse le comprendre et s'y identifier. Tant sur le plan auditif que visuel, notre équipe s'est efforcée de rapprocher la science du monde de manière profondément humaine. Nous espérons inspirer d'autres équipes iGEM à explorer leur propre créativité, afin que la biologie synthétique puisse continuer à évoluer dans sa façon d'améliorer notre monde.