Marta de Menezes (b.1975, Lisbon, Portugal)
Artist, researcher. Graduated in Fine Arts from the University in Lisbon, and in 2001 with an MSt in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford (UK). She has been exploring the intersection between art and biology, demonstrating that biological technologies can be used as a new artistic medium. In 1999, de Menezes created her first biological artwork Nature? by modifying the wing patterns of live butterflies (P. Blakefield Laboratory, University of Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands); it was exhibited at Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, 2000) and widely covered by North and South America, Europe, Japan and Australia media. Her works have been shown at various international media art exhibitions, including The art in science / the science in art (Oxford, 2002), BioFeel (Perth, 2002), L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), ARCO (Madrid, 2004, 2006), E=mc2 (Coimbra, 2005), META.morfosis (Badajoz, 2006) and Genesis (Utrecht, 2007). De Menezes is the author of numerous bio art articles published in magazines and catalogues such as Leonardo (MIT Press), BioFeel (PICA), Ars Electronica (Springer), BioMediale (KB NCCA), Art et Biotechnologies (UQAM) and Art, Biotechnology and Culture (MIT Press). She has given lectures at international educational institutions, among them: the Max Plank Institute for Neurobiology (Munich), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston), the University of Oxford (Oxford) and Universite Paris 6 (Paris). From 2000-2004, she worked on research programs at the Imperial College for Science, Technology and Medicine (London) and the University of Oxford. Since 2006, de Menezes has been the Art Director of Ectopia, an experimental art laboratory at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (Lisbon, Portugal).