KATINA BITSICAS | Glyphosate Dreams, 2023

Glyphosate Dreams visually translates the deadly herbicide glyphosate into chemically deteriorated images, reflecting on its consequences to body and land, as I navigate the loss of family members. The broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate, found in Roundup, is the most used herbicide in the world, known to cause cancer, with major implications for public health.  However, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), came to different interpretations of the research, where the US EPA “concluded that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans”. This becomes a public health concern, when reality becomes secondary to the issue at hand to protect the company that utilizes this chemical and refuses any admission of guilt.  This is apparent through the EPA email exchanges with Monsanto. I selected the most poignant parts of these email exchanges to include in a photographic project using glyphosate to physically deteriorate C-prints of these emails over time as they were buried in the ground. Additionally, I used images from my personal archive of my family’s land and farm that went through the same image treatment and process. The results of these prints varied from partially deteriorated, highlighting specific sections of the print, to completely disintegrated, leaving a behind a ghost-like image.  These prints are then scanned and reprinted as large format C-prints, creating an archival interpretation of the imagery.

BIO

Katina Bitsicas is a Greek-American new media artist who utilizes video, installation, photography, AR and performance in her artworks to explore grief, loss, trauma and memory.  She has exhibited worldwide, including The Armory Show, PULSE Art Fair, Satellite Art Fair, Superchief Gallery NFT, Plexus Projects, the Wheaton Biennial curated by Legacy Russell, CADAF: Digital Art Month Paris, Torrance Art Museum, Westbeth Gallery, New York, Eye’s Walk Festival, Syros, Greece, 57th Dimitria Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece, HereArt in New York, Art in Odd Places in Orlando, Digital Graffiti Festival, and the St. Louis International Film Festival. In 2022, her artist book Luci: The Girl with Four Hearts was published with Flower Press.  She received her BA from Kalamazoo College, Post-Baccalaureate from SACI in Florence, Italy, and MFA from the University of South Florida. She is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Digital Storytelling at the University of Missouri, where she also conducts research with the MU School of Medicine on utilizing digital storytelling as a meaning-making intervention for bereaved family members.  This collaborative research has been published in Death Studies, OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, and the Journal of Social Work in End-Of-Life & Palliative Care.