Ana María Gómez López's Self-Experimentation Art Explores Vulnerability and Biology

Ana María Gómez López, an interdisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam, employs self-experimentation to investigate vulnerability, biology, and knowledge production. In her ongoing work 'Inoculate' (2013–), she planted a Begonia Semperflorens seed in her tear duct, a hybrid species from the Americas, mirroring discoveries of seeds in dogs' eyes. This act involves controlling bodily movements for sunlight and rest to facilitate growth, challenging anthropocentric norms by removing conventional perspectives. Another project, 'Punctum' (2017–), uses stainless-steel needles and disposable plastic lines to enable extra-corporeal blood circulation, reflecting on bodily systems and communal relations. Her art addresses survival mechanisms, families, and homeland, often extending into shared instructions and research. Currently, she examines medical practices, needle-exchange sites, veterinary hospitals, and middens in the Netherlands, focusing on progressive public health and the West's biological shaping amid site disappearances and care-seeking populations. Gómez López positions herself as the first patient in these explorations. Selected by Shen Xin, a video and performance artist from Minneapolis known for a 2022 solo exhibition at the Swiss Institute in New York, Gómez López's work highlights intersections of art, research, and education.