Amitai Romm's speculative art merges ancient divination with biotechnology

Danish artist Amitai Romm creates speculative installations and sculptures that blend archaic methods with emerging technologies, envisioning hybrid ecologies for a postapocalyptic future. His 2016 solo exhibition 'how shall the sea be referred to' at Bianca D’Alessandro gallery in Copenhagen featured photogravure images on worn notebook paper, tarpaulins with water puddles and Laserdiscs, and large steel discs titled Parable. In 2017, his show Hibernation at Tranen Contemporary Art Center included Parable discs punctuated by trilobite fossils and polystyrene Sarcophagi boxes containing spices or mace spray. Romm also participates in the collective Diakron, which organizes Primer exhibition series at biotech company Aquaporin's premises in Copenhagen suburbs, mixing medieval woodcuts with contemporary art. He is a finalist for the 2018 Dorothea von Stetten Art Award, leading to a group exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bonn. Romm's work positions artistic practice as science-fiction, merging scientific experimentation with fictional narratives through magnetic rods, 3D printers, and organic machine depictions. His drawings feature humanoid figures with tubes and complex organic machines, suggesting alternative survival strategies involving scrap metal salvage and algae DNA analysis. The artist lives and works in Copenhagen, with recent exhibitions including Mediated Matter at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in 2017.