Fall 2026 Visiting Artist Colloquium: Paul Vanouse

Paul Vanouse has sought to force the arcane codes of scientific communication into a broader cultural language. Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his art practice. For nearly thirty years he has employed molecular biology techniques in his artwork to challenge notions of individual, racial, and national identity. His current project, “Utter”, is a highly process-based endeavor that explores the phenomena of breathing. The multi-sensory artwork is an intricate glass apparatus containing microbes and visceral fluids that produces moist, odiferous emissions, simulating human breath, without humans.
In “Relative Velocity Inscription Device”, he literally races DNA from his Jamaican-American family members, in a DNA sequencing gel, to explore the relationship between early 20th Century Eugenics and late 20th Century Human Genomics. The double entendre of race highlights their shared obsession with “genetic fitness”, “Latent Figure Protocol”, “Ocular Revision”, “Suspect Inversion Center”, and “America Project”, use molecular biology techniques to challenge the cultural authority of DNA fingerprinting. A recent project, “Labor”, is a multi-sensory installation which produces the scent of human sweat—but without humans. The scent is produced in three bio-reactors in the exhibition space incubating bacteria of the human epidermis. The project positions viewers to contemplate the changing borders of what is considered human. “Labor” was awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, in Linz, Austria in 2019. In 2022, Vanouse and Tina Rivers Ryan’s co-curated exhibition “Difference Machines” at Albright-Knox Northland, in Buffalo, received an Award for Excellence by the Association of Art Museum Curators. His 2024 book, Difference, Sameness and DNA: Investigations in Critical Art and Science, chronicles over two decades of his artwork and scholarship.
His work has been exhibited in over thirty countries and widely across the US. Venues have included: Walker Art Center, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Carnegie Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, Henry Art Gallery, New Museum, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Louvre in Paris, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin, Muffathalle in Munich, ZKM in Karlsruhe and TePapa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand.
His work has been supported by Creative Capital Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Simons Foundation, Fulbright Program, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mellon Charitable Trust, and the National Science Foundation.
Vanouse is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Art, and Director of the Coalesce Center for Biological Art at the University at Buffalo.
Fall 2026 Visiting Artist Colloquium
Wednesdays @ 5 – 6:15pm
Chazen Auditorium
art.wisc.edu/public-programs/
The Art Department Colloquium is a series supported by the Anonymous Fund and the Brittingham Trust. Visiting Artist lectures are held every Wednesday during the academic year, and are free and open to the public.
Discover the latest developments in Fine art, Craft, and Design at our free public lectures by some of the nation’s most prominent artists, critics, and gallery and museum directors.