Evolving Narratives

The exhibition, Evolving Narratives, brings genetic diversity into the public imagination, fostering dialogue between science, culture, and society while encouraging new ways of understanding biodiversity, adaptation, and humanity's relationship with the living world.

Curated by Xiatong Cai, Siyu Gao, and Ivan Vander Biesen 

Featuring artists: Ivan Vander Biesen, Yifei Cheng, Christine Fitzgerald, Milene Alexandra Guerreiro, Adi Habul, Simon Martin, Filipe Martinho, Ana Ligia Primo, Zihang Qi, Bowen Wu, and Yi Zhao

Articles for each artwork can be seen on our LinkedIn page

Yi Zhao is an installation artist and a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication. She has served as artistic director of China’s first Industrial Art Expo, curated international installation exhibitions, and worked as a visiting professor at several universities. For 30 years, she has specialized in fiber-based installation art within an Eastern cultural context. Her works have appeared in over 40 exhibitions, received coverage from more than 50 media outlets, and are held in collections worldwide. She currently lives in Beijing. 

Christine Fitzgerald is a visual artist based in Ottawa, Canada, whose practice combines historical photographic processes with contemporary technologies to examine themes of loss, extinction, and human relationships with the natural world. A graduate of the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa, as well as Acadia and Dalhousie Universities, she has received support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work has been featured by The Washington Post, National Geographic, Canada’s History, and Antennae: Journal of Nature and Visual Culture. She received the 2023 Karsh Award from the City of Ottawa, recognizing her sustained excellence in photography, and was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2024. 

Bowen Wu is a Glasgow-based composer and audiovisual artist whose practice spans sound art, audiovisual composition, installation, experimental music, film scoring, and live electronic performance. His work explores ecology, technology, embodiment, and reimagined notions of Chineseness through interdisciplinary media. His works have been presented in China, the UK, the US, Japan, Australia, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, Austria, Brazil, South Korea, Thailand, and Ecuador, and have received recognition from festivals and awards including MA/IN, MUSICACOUSTICA, IEMC, and the Danny Awards. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Electronic Music Composition at the University of Glasgow. 

Yifei Cheng graduated from the Royal College of Art in Information Experience Design. In her work, she focuses on exploring the extension of human power dynamics in nature and society, as well as the development of self-consciousness under the object ideology. In addition to reflecting the quest for self-identification, her work questions established power dynamics and societal conventions. Her work explores how nature and society interact, how identity is reinterpreted in modern society, and how we discover our own place in the environment. It not only mirrors the quest for self-identification but also questions established societal conventions and power dynamics. 

Ivan Vander Biesen, who is also one of the curators of this exhibition, studied photography at the Academy of Leuven but expanded his view on photography by working as well digital, analog, alternative as experimental (in the meaning of creating new chemical techniques to challenge digital and AI-photography). He exhibits mainly analog photography. Besides he acts regularly as DoP on movie sets. He teaches and mentors analog and experimental processes, and photo-artistic processes at the Photography Club of the University of Leuven.

Qi Zihang, born in Dalian, Liaoning Province in 2000, earned her Bachelor’s degree from the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2022, followed by a Master’s degree from the School of Experimental and Techno Art at CAFA in 2026. Her artistic practice centers on reflections upon techno-utopianism within a post-human context, alongside eco-art explorations rooted in this framework. She frequently adopts moving-image works and biotechnology as core creative mediums. Furthermore, through deconstructing and dissecting the linguistic logic of diverse media, she seeks to provoke audiences into critical contemplation of ecological crises and related issues arising from the post-human condition. 

Milene Alexandra Guerreiro is a junior researcher at the Centre for Functional Ecology, University of Coimbra. She holds a PhD in Biosciences and studies zooplankton and fish community dynamics, with focus on fish early life stages, recruitment and connectivity in coastal and oceanic systems. In 2024, she participated in COASTANTAR 2024, the first Portuguese scientific sailing expedition to Antarctica. Alongside her research, she is dedicated to science communication, integrating art and photography to bring aquatic environments and their stories closer to the public. She is currently attending the Nature Drawing course at the University of Lisbon’s Museum of Natural History and Science. 

Filipe Martinho is an assistant professor at the Departamento of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, and a co-PI of the Marine and Coastal Ecosystems research line at the Centre for Functional Ecology. His research focuses on the effects of climate change and anthropogenic pressures on marine and estuarine fish, particularly their recruitment, connectivity and migrations. He is involved in several national and international projects and is a member of EMBRC-PT and ICES Working Group on the Value of Coastal Habitats for Exploited Species (WGHVES). Alongside his scientific work, he is an amateur photographer engaging in science communication.

Ana Lígia Primo is an assistant professor at the Departament of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, and a researcher at the Centre for Functional Ecology. Her research focuses on the impacts of climate change on marine and estuarine zooplankton and ichthyoplankton. She has contributed to several national and international research projects in marine ecology and is a member of the ICES Working Group Towards an EURopean OBservatory of the invasive calanoid copepod Pseudodiaptomus marinUS (WKEUROBUS). She is also active in science communication, participating in hands-on activities, festivals and photography exhibitions that connect scientific knowledge with art.

Adi Habul is a Bosnian comic artist, illustrator, and biologist whose work brings together visual storytelling, environmental science, and social critique. Based in Sarajevo, he has worked professionally in biodiversity conservation for over fifteen years, allowing scientific knowledge and ecological concerns to inform his artistic practice. His comics and caricatures explore environmental degradation, politics, corruption, and the often-uneasy relationship between society and nature, combining satire with accessible visual communication. From 2009 to 2010, his political, social, and environmental cartoons appeared regularly in the daily newspaper Oslobođenje. His recent projects include Genes on Wheels (2024), a comic series communicating genomic biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, alongside illustrations for children’s books, educational materials, public campaigns, and cultural projects. Through humour and narrative, Habul makes complex scientific and societal questions visible to broad audiences. 

I was born in South Africa and came to the UK for my PhD at the University of Cambridge. In 2019 I started my research group at the University of Edinburgh, funded by a Royal Society University Research fellowship. My group and I study the nature of genetic variation: how variants arise and spread within a species, as well as how they cross species boundaries. I enjoy thinking about new ways to quantify, visualise and communicate genetic data.