Self-Care — Lyndsey Walsh

Smell concept and realization made by Theresa Zwerschke and Lyndsey Walsh for and in collaboration with Shu Lea Cheang, Commissioned by Haus der Kunst Munich.

2025

Smell composition of “whale-centric planetary metabolism” for “Whale Falls, Carbon Sinks” installation as part of “Carbon” Exhibition

Smell concept realized by Lyndsey Walsh and Alanna Lynch for Carbon Aesthetics Group (Desiree Foerster, Andrés Burbano, Myriel Milicevic, Alex Toland, Clemens Winkler and Karolina Sobecka) for exhibition at Science Gallery Bengaluru

2023

Curation

Venue

Year

I’m Daddy: “Artificial Follies” exhibition

Dzialdov, Berlin, Germany

2023

I’m Daddy: “LORE” exhibition

Gelegenheiten, Berlin, Germany

2022

“Art and Natural Sciences: Master Showcase 2021”

AIR.ITMO, St. Petersburg, Russia

2021

Writing

Publisher Name and Type

Year

Articles: CLOT Magazine

CLOT Magazine is an online publishing platform dedicated to art/technology interactions and experimental art forms based out of London, UK. Lyndsey is a Contributing Writer, authoring Op-Ed, Interviews, Insights, and more since 2020.

Various

Articles: Makery Media

Makery.info is an online and bilingual (French/English) magazine, covering the Do-It-Yourself and creative communities scenes in art, science, technologies. Lyndsey is a contributing chronicler, authoring articles since 2023.

Various

Book Contribution (3 Recipes, titled: “First Course: How to grow a Rainbow”, “Second Course: How to Feed Your Cancer”, “Third Course: How to Feed the Earth”)

Commissioned and Written for The Course Book, a companion publication to The Course project by the South Korean curatorial collective named set. Publication is biligual (with both Korean and English versions of the contributed texts).

TBA

Book Contributions: “Self-Care” (solo authorship) and “Smell Workshop” (co-written with Alanna Lynch)

Commissioned and written for the Matter of Flux book, which is a publication of the research project “Matter of Flux” initiated by Art Laboratory Berlin.

2024

Book Contribution: “Living Waste: An Artistic Intervention on Genetic Engineering at the Humboldt Lab”

Commissioned and written for the After Nature Laboratory Notebook accompanying the After Nature Exhibition by the Humboldt Labor at the Humboldt Forum, with publishers Humboldt University of Berlin and DIAPHANES.

2024

Chapter in Book: “Crips, cryptids, and imagining other beings”

Commissioned and written for FERAL Labs node book #2, Feralities, edited by Yvonne Billimore, Tina Dolinšek, Uroš Veber, published by BioArt Society and Zavod Projekt Atol in the context of Rewilding Cultures project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU.

2024

Academic Article: “Self-Care: Seeking Queer Liberation from the Medical Gaze and Genetic Fatalism”

Accepted and published in the AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, Section: Main Topic: Art, Science, and Health, Issue No.: 32, October 2023, .

2023

Blog Article: “The Teratoma Will Always Return”

Commissioned and written for Posthuman Laboratories as part of the Intelligence Unbound Project (online)

2023

Academic Article: “(R)EVOLUTION: Optogenetics Art and Interspecies Microperformance”

Accepted and published in Journal of British Computer Science, Politics of the Machines - Rogue Research

2021

Articles: Unbore Collective

Unbore Collective is an organisation and online platform based in the Netherlands that fosters and advocates arts, life sciences and technology intersections. Lyndsey was a contributing writer for Unbore from 2019-2020.

2019-2020

Magazine Article: “Young and Healthy and Waiting to Get Cancer”

Commissioned and published for Nautilus Magazine, US based Science, Culture, and Technology Magazine.

2020

SELF-CARE

Self-Care is a multi-media artwork and installation exploring notions of care, labor, intergenerational trauma, and bodies, as well as the impact of the gender binary on so-called “female” healthcare. Self-Care aims to critically examine notions of care, the role of gender in medicine, ableism, and familial relationships surrounding notions of disease. The project attempts to undoom and reclaim bodily autonomy over a body caught at the crossroads of neoliberalist healthcare agendas and genetic fatalism.

The centerpiece of Self-Care is a specially designed wearable chest binder that can house living breast cancer cells with the same genetic condition as the artist. This chest binder allows the artist to queer and reclaim their body by caring for their predestined cancer before it emerges. As a wearable, the binder also uses the cancer’s liquid environment as a means to flatten the appearance of the chest and perform gender-affirming care for the wearer. The binder is a device that questions and attempts to reclaim the body in consideration of the looming threat of bodily violence related to medical interventions for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Syndrome.

Self-Care is a rehearsal of embodiment for bodies that are constantly transgressing the boundaries between sick and not sick. It explores the hopes, successes, and failures that emerge from attempts to “live” with a body and all its faults. The work is also an archive of the multiple mutants and subjectivities, as described by Jason Zingsheim’s Mutational Identity Theory, that come together to form a sense of self and the connection the self can have with its body. The accompanying video works titled Mommagraphy Techniques and A Letter to My Mother catalog the intergenerational experiences of embodiment and struggles concerning health and gender across four generations: the artist, their mother, their mother’s mother, and their mother’s mother’s mother.

2021-2023

Self-Care photography (slideshow).

Photography credit: Asya Kaplan and Pavlina Belokrenitskaya

Photo documentation and screenshot stills of Self-Care Video Works, “Mommagraphy Techniques” (2022) and “A Letter to My Mother” (2023).

Photo credit: Tim Deussen, as part of Self-Care Installation for the exhibition “Matter of Flux” (2023) at Art Laboratory Berlin, Berlin, DE.

Self-Care installation at BioArt Society/SOLU Space in Helsinki, FI as part of “m/other becomings, i” (slideshow).

In the site-specific Finnish installation of the work, Self-Care included an interview with Finnish genetic health expert Kristiina Aittomäki. Photography credit: Genietta Varsi and Milla Millasnoore.

Self-Care Credits:

Artist: Lyndsey Walsh
Commissioned by: Bioart Society for “m/other becomings” program
Production: Bioart Society and Art Laboratory Berlin
Mommagraphy Techniques Video: Interview with the artist’s mother and remixed footage from the US National Institute of Health (public domain)
Self-Care portrait photography: Pavlina Belokrenitskaia
Scientific collaboration and support: Prof. Dr. Peter Hegemann, Dr. Johannes Oppermann, Enrico Schiewer, Dr. Olga Baidukova, and Prof. Dr. Kristiina Aittomäki.
HCC1937 Cells (Berlin Installation): German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH (DSMZ)

Production facilities: Humboldt University of Berlin’s Department of Experimental Biophysics and Aalto University’s Design Factory.
Incubator: Collaboration between Lyndsey Walsh & Petteri Haverinen
Photo documentation: Asya Kaplan, Genietta Varsi, Milla Millasnoore, and Tim Deussen
Concept research: Prophylaxis project by Lyndsey Walsh with Art.ITMO.Reisdency

SELF-CARE is based on the research project titled “Prophylaxis” done during Art.ITMO.Residency at the Art & Science Centre at ITMO University in 2021.

SELF-CARE was commissioned by the Bioart Society for m/other becomings project and was part of the “m/other becomings” exhibition i in May of 2022 in Helsinki, FI. m/other becomings is a collaboration between Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology (DK), The Association for Arts and Mental Health (DK), Kultivator (SE), Art Lab Gnesta (SE), and Bioart Society (FI).

Self-Care was exhibited in “Matter of Flux” at Art Laboratory Berlin in 2023.

The work was awarded the Honorary Mention in the EU S+T+ARTS Prize in 2024 and was shortlisted for the Falling Walls Foundation Breakthrough Awards for Art & Science in 2025.

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