RADIAL
—BREED-WEST, YIELD-EAST (2026)
Graduation project, MA GEO-design, Design Academy EindhovenUpcoming exhibitions:
17-27 October 2026 - Dutch Design Week
The geneticist’s precision,
the breeder’s rigor,
the selectioner’s gaze—
RADIAL, is a multi-media installation and research project, that originates in the disputable experimental uses of radiation in sunflower mutation breeding, undertaken by Soviet scientists between 1950 and 1980, when Moldova became a polygon for agronomic experiments, meant to augment sunflower oil production. The aim was to violently magnify agricultural export to feed the Soviet Union, and further enforce ideological molecular control, sterilizing the plant’s parent to amplify the vigor of the commercial hybrid, all at the expense of the living Moldovan lands, affected in ways beyond our knowledge and understanding.
The work’s duration unravels a nested story, where the past historical temporalities of Soviet plant breeding, interweave with the primal, circadian rhythm of the sunflower hybrid, following its own biological tempo. And advancing into an unsettled grey zone, where molecular interventions in the heredity mechanisms of organisms are rewriting our understanding of naturalness, questioning the principle of ‘integrity of the cell’ as foundational constants of living bodies.
The preservation oil vessel takes its form after “The GAMMA Field”, a patch of land irradiated with an installation built in 1972 by the State Agrarian University of Moldova. It featured a central, highly radioactive Cobalt-60 pole, designed to irradiate crops on a circular field, and study the genetic effects of radiation on agriculture. Its structure transfigures into a light-emitting biological clock, that casts a shadow on the surroundings, following the slow heliotropic movement of the sunflower. And simultaneously acting as a preservation medium of Soviet scientific inheritance, which haunts the present through capitalistic scientific metaphors of control.
The work is further enlivened by the perpetually mutating sound of the genetic code of the sterile sunflower-parent, also known as—HA89 (PET1). When touched, the sunflower capitulum and its syringe, react in unpredictable ways.
An unknown scientist, activates and enchants the layers of the work, through a sung-spoken performance.
the breeder’s rigor,
the selectioner’s gaze—
RADIAL, is a multi-media installation and research project, that originates in the disputable experimental uses of radiation in sunflower mutation breeding, undertaken by Soviet scientists between 1950 and 1980, when Moldova became a polygon for agronomic experiments, meant to augment sunflower oil production. The aim was to violently magnify agricultural export to feed the Soviet Union, and further enforce ideological molecular control, sterilizing the plant’s parent to amplify the vigor of the commercial hybrid, all at the expense of the living Moldovan lands, affected in ways beyond our knowledge and understanding.
The work’s duration unravels a nested story, where the past historical temporalities of Soviet plant breeding, interweave with the primal, circadian rhythm of the sunflower hybrid, following its own biological tempo. And advancing into an unsettled grey zone, where molecular interventions in the heredity mechanisms of organisms are rewriting our understanding of naturalness, questioning the principle of ‘integrity of the cell’ as foundational constants of living bodies.
The preservation oil vessel takes its form after “The GAMMA Field”, a patch of land irradiated with an installation built in 1972 by the State Agrarian University of Moldova. It featured a central, highly radioactive Cobalt-60 pole, designed to irradiate crops on a circular field, and study the genetic effects of radiation on agriculture. Its structure transfigures into a light-emitting biological clock, that casts a shadow on the surroundings, following the slow heliotropic movement of the sunflower. And simultaneously acting as a preservation medium of Soviet scientific inheritance, which haunts the present through capitalistic scientific metaphors of control.
The work is further enlivened by the perpetually mutating sound of the genetic code of the sterile sunflower-parent, also known as—HA89 (PET1). When touched, the sunflower capitulum and its syringe, react in unpredictable ways.
An unknown scientist, activates and enchants the layers of the work, through a sung-spoken performance.
