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A blue, brown, and translucent sculpture by Neri Oxman.
Courtesy Neri Oxman and Mediated Matter Group

Neri Oxman’s “Material Ecology” Gets the MoMA Spotlight

Aileen Kwun

February 22, 2020
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As the founder and director of MIT’s Mediated Matter group, the Israeli-American designer and futurist Neri Oxman is pioneering the way forward for “material ecology,” renegotiating the relationship between nature and the man-made with otherworldly creations that seem straight out of a sci-fi movie, pushing the boundaries of biology, engineering, and design. Whereas past eras—the Stone Age, the Iron Age, and the Bronze Age—were defined by materials, and our current one by digital technology, in Oxman’s mind, we’ve already entered the dawn of the next era: the Biological Age. As she put it last year on Ep. 16 of our Time Sensitive podcast, “The Biological Age is an age where we have disassociated ourselves from physical materials as the single defining element of our existence in the universe.”

Working in close observation of the natural world, Oxman and her team find inspiration in everything from silkworms spinning their cocoons to the structural characteristics of a crustacean’s shell. The group often refers to living organisms as their collaborators on highly engineered creations, which can be as philosophical as they are functional. Opening today and on view through May 25 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology,” organized by Paola Antonelli and Anna Burkhardt, features seven major works that have defined her 20-year career. Among these are the fantastical “Silk Pavilion,” which, like much of Oxman’s work, is not only digitally fabricated but grown—in this case, by using silkworms as living 3-D printers.

# Art# Museums# New York# Exhibitions# The Future# Nature# Planet# Animals# Sculpture# Media

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culture

An Album of Cover Songs Honors the Legacy of Leonard Cohen

Though nearly six years have gone by since Leonard Cohen’s passing, the long shadow cast by his legacy as one of the 20th century’s most esteemed and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters shows no signs of lifting from the public’s imagination anytime soon. From the enveloping warmth of “Suzanne,” to the high drama of “Hallelujah,” to the chilling minimalist and gospel juxtaposition of his swansong “You Want it Darker,” Cohen managed to constantly reinvent himself, leaving behind the rare achievement of a musical body of work whose most impressive moments exist across eras.