Iri Berkleid lives and works in Paris. After exploring experimental techniques at the biological lab of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Iri Berkleid has developed her own cosmogony through a practice grounded in intervening within microbiological processes of matter formation. The artist shapes cellulose as it grows in symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast, thus revisiting traditional pictorial and sculptural methods through the lens of the biological principles that underpin her practice. These principles have become both her primary constraint for creation and a major source of inspiration.

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By seeking to transfigure ever-mutating organic matter, Iri Berkleid aims to «shift our perception of the abject and the sublime, and question our relationship to the body and its environment». She sees each work produced through this dual process of creation as a multitude of artworks, whose different states she shares through immersive installations, performances, or «documentary-works.»

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Her will of transmission is driven by the concept of the “aura” as developed by the philosopher Walter Benjamin. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, the finilized and stabilized pieces—presented as sculptures or “organic tapestries”—retain the traces of past vital activity.

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In searching for the imprints of the psyche upon matter, the themes explored by the artist sketch out intimate chimerical imaginaries drawn from her dreams or from social myths inspired by evolving contemporary narratives, such as the biopolitics of bodies, interspecies alterity, or spirituality in connection with a microcosmic nature.