Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible

About the Exhibition

Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible is a two-person exhibition by Yuhanxiao (Maggie) Ma and Anna Ren. Framed around questions of power and vulnerability, the exhibition asks: If progress demands subjects for sacrifice, what separates a “guinea pig” from a person? Who decides which lives are expendable, or deemed eligible, and under what logic?

Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible is a multimedia exhibition that transforms visitors from observers into participants in a speculative world where the boundaries between human and animal, observer and observed, essential and inessential collapse.

Developed over two years, the exhibition combines Ma’s sculptures, prints, and other multimedia works with a central collaboration with Ren. At its heart is The Guinea Pig Eligibility Test, an interactive, projection-mapped installation that serves as the conceptual and spatial hinge of the show. This piece invites participants to complete a questionnaire modeled after medical forms, scored to reward disclosures of social vulnerability. Those deemed “eligible” have their facial biometric data transformed into guinea pig–human hybrids, projected into a shared digital farm.

Through a shift from sterile laboratory to pastoral scene, the exhibit reveals how systems of power soften their edges, making processes feel natural, even inevitable. “Guinea pigs don’t volunteer,” the artists explain. “They’re made eligible.”

Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible probes the ethics of medical testing, exposing how innovation, framed as progress, is entangled with profit, control, and decisions about whose lives can be risked.

This exhibition is supported through THE BLANC’s Student Art Empowerment Program.

About the Artists

Yuhanxiao (Maggie) Ma

www.mayuhanxiao.com

@mayuhanxiao

[email protected]

Yuhanxiao (Maggie) Ma is a US-based research-driven multimedia artist and PhD student at DXARTS (University of Washington). Her practice lies at the intersection of speculative fiction, science, and ethics, blending critical inquiry with parafictional storytelling. Through 3D fabrication, casting, physical computing, and multimedia installation, she explores how technological and scientific systems shape lived experience and reveal the often-overlooked consequences of innovation. 

Informed by phenomenology and critical theory, Ma both employs and critiques emerging technologies to examine their broader societal implications. Her work has been exhibited internationally at major venues including Art Electronica (Linz), as well as in New York, Barcelona, and Shanghai. She has participated in residencies such as the DOM Art Residency (Barcelona), SVA’s Bio Art Residency (New York), and the year-long Gallatin WetLab program on Governors Island.

Anna Ren

www.annarenhe.com

@rr_annah

[email protected]

Anna Ren is a US-based multimedia artist working across CG image-making, immersive technologies, and performance. She holds a B.F.A. in Interactive Media Arts from New York University, where she developed a practice rooted in experimental storytelling, embodied interaction, and critical approaches to emerging technologies.

Ren’s work explores the often-overlooked nuances of culture and contemporary society, tracing their implications and imprints. Her projects have been presented in New York, Linz, Denver, and Berlin, including at Ars Electronica Festival, MANIFEST:IO, the Digerati Experimental Media Festival, and CultureHub’s Re:Fest. Blurring the line between the real and the virtual, her work invites audiences to reflect on how technology shapes the way we experience ourselves and the world around us.

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