Lera Niemackl

Lera Niemackl is a biohacker and artist working with The Open Discovery Institute. Her academic background includes a BFA in Visual Art and a BA in Linguistics. Her experience with biology is primarily autodidactic, underpinned by a background of agriculture and DIY genetic engineering. Lera’s work pushes limits in biology through technique, ethics and application. She prioritizes accessibility and open source information with her work.

Contact info

Instagram: @lera.niemackl

This is an ongoing series of self portraits (called cell portraits), where I use my own living cells as a primary media.

In the most literal sense, these works are me. The exploration of self and identity through a medium that not only came from me, but continues to live independently of me. 

Ethical considerations relating to experimentation on living organisms is a major topic of interest in this series. My cells have undergone a variety of experiments such as genetic engineering, co-culturing & conditional stressors.

Cells were extracted from menstrual blood in an accessible, non-invasive way. This method offers biohackers and independent researchers a new avenue of experimentation that is biologically more aligned with the self.

View collection protocol here.