BioArts

In the past few years, Dr. Jeyifous has established a bio-arts practice which fuses elements of his research focus and methodology with photographic study and digital collage approaches. His first solo exhibition, S is for Soul Sister (hosted at the Arts Incubator in Chicago), used such an approach to revisit and recapture portraits of subjects who were initially featured in the Black ABC Card series, educational materials and visual aids for teaching that were created in 1970 and were photographed in the Harold Ickes Homes on the near South Side of Chicago. Dr. Jeyifous captured sitting portraits of the subjects and produced digital collages using microscopic images of their own cells as a visual layer. Importantly, these were cells from cheek swabs that were obtained at the time they gave audio narratives of their lives during the period the Black ABC cards were created.


Dr. Jeyifous is currently developing two new bioarts projects. The first is an investigation of the process of memory encoding and the ways in which we ascribe meaning to “place”. The second is centered on people who stutter. These projects are rooted in a STEAM-based approach to visual storytelling. This is a novel mode of visual narrative construction and means of engaging and enhancing public discourse and awareness of scientific principles and research.