The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Lucy McRae: Monday, November 18, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us in person for a lecture by artist Lucy McRae followed by an audience Q&A.
Artist Lucy McRae leads a multidisciplinary art-research studio investigating the impact future technologies have on human evolution. In parallel to her gallery and museum-focused art practice, she thrives as a director and a maker, in the writer’s room and in the lab. Boldly staring down the status quo, McRae pioneers a new story for how future technologies will fundamentally alter intimacy, reproduction, biology, and health—shining light on the ethical implications of genetic engineering. Her prophetic aesthetic is flung far from archetypal tropes, creating nostalgia for a future about to happen. McRae’s work diversifies the predictive voices we traditionally call “science” and “technology” through designing hypothetical worlds that use speculation as a tool to provoke an exploration of ideologies and ethics about who we are and where we are headed.
Based in Los Angeles, McRae is a visiting professor at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and a TED Fellow. She is currently a world-building and futurist consultant to a number of Hollywood productions with multiple Oscar-winning directors and producers. McRae has exhibited at the Venice Biennale; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Science Museum, London; Milan Triennale; National Gallery of Victoria; Powerhouse Museum, Australia; SCI-Arc, Los Angeles; MAXXI, Rome; NXT Museum, Amsterdam; Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam; Design Museum Holon, Israel; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. Collaborations and commissions include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ars Electronica, NASA, Aesop, Adidas, Nike, Adobe, Intel, Kia, Dezeen, Unilever, WIRED Health, and BMW Mini. Keynotes have been given at TED, Royal Albert Hall, Cannes Lion, and Tribeca Film Festival.
Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Fashion Council and Department of Fashion.
Photo credit: © Kort Havens
Artist Website
Lucy McRae's website
Gallery Representation
Honor Fraser Gallery
Rising Stars: Meet Lucy McRae
VoyageLA | February 13, 2023
Lucy McRae: ‘Future Sensitive’
Jody Zellen | Art Now LA | October 29, 2022
Lucy McRae on gene editing, human intimacy, and tangible science fiction
Billie Muraben | Wallpaper* | October 21, 2022
Meet Lucy McRae | Sci Fi Artist, Body Architect, visiting Professor at SCI_Arc
ShoutoutLa | July 11, 2022
Lucy McRae: ARTIST / FILMMAKER / INVENTOR
Hugh Weber | The Great Discontent | June 24, 2022
Lucy McRae creates cushion machine to offer lab-grown humans a womb experience
Amy Frearson | dezeen | May 20, 2021
Science fiction artist Lucy McRae on relation between technology and humans
Devanshi Shah | stir world | September 11, 2020
Lucy McRae's Solitary Survival Raft explores fear and hope during the coronavirus pandemic
Marcus Fairs | dezeen | July 9, 2020
Lucy McRae offers an escape from the digital with Future Survival Kit
Amy Frearson | dezeen | January 2, 2020
Getting physical: body architect, designer and science fiction artist Lucy McRae
Jessica Hromas | The Guardian | August 31, 2019
Prototype Your Artistic Evolution with Lucy McRae
Extraordinary Creatives [Podcast] | February 5, 2024 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
Otherworldly by
Fashion from another planet. Unwearable, subversive, radically post-human, alien. Otherworldly presents avant-garde garments, styling, fashion photography, and young designers who are a whole galaxy away from the mainstream.Other rules apply to the fashion of the future. New technologies and materials make things possible today that couldn't have even been imagined in the past. Hightech fabrics and melting forms are no longer science fiction but reality. Fashion is constantly reinventing itself, but many designers and stylists are now taking it to extremes. Inspired by the odd, mutant, and deformed, they are redefining clothing to expand the body --from wearables to the utter transfiguration of the human silhouette. Otherworldly showcases a fashion avantgarde between futurism and fetish. Featuring work by designers such as Lucy McRae, Peter Popps, Marina Hoermanseder, and Viktor & Rolf, it not only explores this groundbreaking development but also its fruitful interplay with photography.
A Section of Now by
Essays on the navigation of new sociospatial relations, from murky digital spaces to contested monuments Featuring essays by Helen Hester, Joanne McNeil, Ann Neumann, Nina Power and Jen Schradi, A Section of Now offers a meditation on new behaviors, rituals and values and their spatial implications, seeking to catalyze urban interventions that accommodate, influence and preempt our new lived realities. Authors address topics ranging from the safety of digital spaces to how normative life trajectories affect the elderly and the many selves each of us presents, while architects present frameworks for spaces for blended families, retirees and contested monuments, among many others. Bringing together essays on the contemporary moment and texts that outline new architectural types to address societal needs, A Section of Now outlines a new relationship between the spaces in which we live and the ways we live within them.
Active Matter by
The first book on active matter, an emerging field focused on programming physical materials to assemble themselves, transform autonomously, and react to information. The past few decades brought a revolution in computer software and hardware; today we are on the cusp of a materials revolution. If yesterday we programmed computers and other machines, today we program matter itself. This has created new capabilities in design, computing, and fabrication, which allow us to program proteins and bacteria, to generate self-transforming wood products and architectural details, and to create clothing from "intelligent textiles" that grow themselves. This book offers essays and sample projects from the front lines of the emerging field of active matter. Active matter and programmable materials are at the intersection of science, art, design, and engineering, with applications in fields from biology and computer science to architecture and fashion. These essays contextualize current work and explore recent research. Sample projects, generously illustrated in color, show the range of possibilities envisioned by their makers. Contributors explore the design of active material at scales from nano to micro, kilo, and even planetary. They investigate processes of self-assembly at a microscopic level; test new materials that can sense and actuate themselves; and examine the potential of active matter in the built environment and in living and artificial systems. Active Matteris an essential guide to a field that could shape the future of design.
Planet B: Ideas for a New World by
What will the world of tomorrow be like? What will we wear? What will we eat? What will we be fighting for? This publication offers an eclectic mix of ideas for a new world--a Planet B--from artists, designers, architects, writers and scientists.
Future Sensitive
Future Sensitive, a solo exhibition of short films, soft sculptures, and kinetic installations by the filmmaker and body architect, Lucy McRae. The exhibition was on view October 1, 2022 — February 17, 2023 at Honor Fraser Gallery.
Lucy McRae: FUTUREKIN
Lucy McRae’s solo show at SCI-Arc, Futurekin, is set in a post CRISPR world, where kids are brought to term and grown in complex, sensitive wombs in a lab. Previously on view February 18, 2022 – April 13, 2022.
Creativity Rules — How artist Lucy McRae brings new life to the body
Coining the term “body architect” to describe the work that she creates, Lucy fuses art, design and science in order to imagine new ways that technology can support the body, and evolve our understanding of it.
Lucy McRae: Body Architect
The first survey exhibition of McRae’s provocative and beguiling work, Lucy McRae: Body Architect traverses the Australian artist-designer’s numerous concerns. The exhibit was on view at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia from Aug 30, 2019 – February 9, 2020.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).