Holobionts, 2023, digital prints of collages from found materials
Chloe Watfern (artist) and staff from the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct and South Eastern Sydney Local Health District.
The human body is a holobiont. It is one of many biological examples of complex, multi-species assemblages that live together in close physical proximity to form a single ecological unit.
If the health system revolves around the human body, then what holobiont does it form? How might we move from the microcosm of cells – their momentous evolution catalysed at a moment of contact – to the macrocosms of hospitals and precincts, expanding ever further into the fields of global and planetary health? What might care look and feel like across these connected systems?
In mid-2023, a group of colleagues gathered to make collages and talk about care in the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct and beyond it.
We acknowledged the weight of the site’s history, mostly forgotten, and visions for future approaches to care, health and wellbeing. Chloe offered plants from the local area, and cuttings from her archive of books and magazines – human anatomy and flowers, neurons and painted butterflies. Collage is an art of finding connections between things that might not seem to have anything to do with each other. It is a process of assembling disparate entities into a new ecological unit.
The final Holobionts, printed and stuck to the walls , hold a little of each thing spoken, each image cut and placed when we gathered. The building hosts them now, may they remind us of our interconnectedness.