Petja Ivanova

Born in Shumen, Bulgaria and based in Berlin, Petja graduated from the University of Arts Berlin in the class for Computational Art/Generative Art in 2015. In her trans-disciplinary practice she combines archaeology, biology, physics, computation and the poetic in order to promote the ‘poetic method’ as a counterweight to the socially dominating ‘scientific method’, understanding this  practice in non-linear relation with Fluxus & Avantgarde. She runs Studio for Poetic Futures and Speculative Ecologies out of a little caravan in Berlin. Very early in her artistic work with electronics and sensors she began to include mythological approaches, the magical and non-quantifiable to analyses these connections in terms of deep time of media/technology. Being a bit frustrated by the simple causalities in quantification she turned to overcoming the conceptual divide of what is natural and what  is  technological by working with crystals and electronic circuits and latero n also with plants, microorganisms and now insects and bacteria. 
Petja Ivanova wants to dismantle patriarchal ideologies through art & design. Therefore, she works with innovative technologies from a feminist technoscience perspective. In her latest work series 'meek is the warrior' she looks at exoskeletons of insects and how they have inspired and supported the design of armour and war gear, stemming from a desire for protection and separation within our cultures of domination. Insect exoskeletons are consist of chitin, as the second most abundant material on this planet, right after cellulose, chitin is used in sustainable design practices as a bioplastic and also has been discovered in medical innovations, its derivate chitosan being used for wound healing. Petja Ivanova builds suits inspired by knights’ armour out of this wound healing material which is extracted from fermented broken insect 'shells'. Rendering the broken shell equally valuable like its counterpart for protection, this artistic practice inverts the function of the exoskeleton as one for separation into one of connection as in its wound healing process the insect body and the human cells grow together, healed.