#01 Mitochronia : Participants : Andrea Abbatangelo
'History of Bees'. Ink on paper. 2026

Across ecosystems, energy is not a static resource but a process, circulating through networks of organisms that sustain and transform it. Bees play a crucial role in this process. Through pollination, they enable plant reproduction and support the wider circulation of energy across species and environments.

This function can be understood in relation to processes occurring at a different scale. Within the cell, mitochondria regulate the transformation of energy necessary for life to persist. At a different scale, bees operate within ecological systems, maintaining the conditions through which energy continues to circulate.

The works New Observations on the History of Bees n.2, n.6 & n.7 (Consciousness of Bee), and Inkblot for Bees emerge from this line of inquiry, drawing on microscopy, printmaking, and observational research to reflect on how these processes become perceptible.

The work focuses on what happens when this system is disrupted. Drawing on research into the effects of pesticides on pollinators, it examines how chemical exposure alters the cognitive and perceptual capacities of bees, affecting their ability to navigate, communicate, and complete pollination cycles.

Collapse unfolds here as a gradual condition of instability. Energy continues to circulate, but less reliably, with increasing fragmentation across the system. What emerges is a form of metabolic imbalance that extends beyond the individual organism to the scale of the ecosystem.

This condition finds a parallel in Paradox of Care, a video work that extends the research into a different biological context. Through the example of a parasitic barnacle embedded within an octocoral, the work reflects on forms of coexistence in which the host cannot eliminate the intruder, and instead reorganises itself around it. As in cellular metabolism, where mitochondria originate from an unresolved intrusion, the boundary between host and foreign body is not restored, but sustained.

Across these works, the research considers how systems persist not through equilibrium, but through adaptation to disruption. The images and moving image do not illustrate these processes directly, but translate them into visual structures that reflect disturbance, disorientation, and the shifting conditions through which life is sustained.

My practice is grounded in research developed in dialogue with scientists across biology, chemistry, and environmental science. During my MA in Fine Art & Digital at Central Saint Martins (UAL), I investigated the cognitive and perceptual impact of pesticides on pollinators, working in exchange with researchers and laboratory environments in Darmstadt. This research formed the basis of New Observations on the History of Bees, a body of work examining how chemical exposure alters non-human cognition and behaviour, and how those alterations might be made perceptible through art.

This interdisciplinary approach has continued through my participation in the Alias x Serpentine Future Art Ecosystems programme, where I developed BioViscous and BeeVision Fragmenta. These projects combine AI systems, biological references, and material experimentation to explore perception, ecological vulnerability, and forms of interspecies interaction. Working with AI in this context meant treating it less as a tool and more as a collaborator in speculating on non-human ways of sensing the world.

My current work extends this trajectory into sculptural and light-based installation. Náttura, commissioned by Science Gallery Monterrey for 2026, brings together environmental sensors, responsive light and sound, and computational processes to translate biological and atmospheric conditions into a shared perceptual field. Across these projects, the consistent thread is an interest in how art can make non-human experience available to human attention, without reducing or appropriating it.

Website: https://www.andreaabbatangelo.com/