Image: Genietta Varsi, Porosibilidades: gotear/ agotear // Porousibilities: dripping, dropping, 2023
We are pleased to announce that Genietta Varsi has been selected for the 2026 Tokyo Art & Science Research Residency, organised in collaboration with Bioart Society, BioClub Tokyo and the Finnish Institute in Japan.
Genietta Varsi is a Peruvian sculptor and researcher. Her practice explores the material relations between humans and their environments by handling biological and ecological activities as sculptural processes. She is interested in how our bodies are shaped by and shaping the spaces we inhabit. Working across sculpture, drawing, writing, video and participatory actions, she often creates shared social rituals that turn personal biological processes into public experiences. Her current research focuses on urban waters and bodily fluids, examining how these liquids move across membranes at different scales.
During her residency, Varsi will research the connection between the body and the territory through salt. By harvesting salt from both human sweat and the Pacific Ocean, she explores the transition of fluid into crystal as a material history of the land. Mapping Tokyo’s buried rivers, Varsi will organize sweating encounters to bring the city’s hidden waters to the surface. She will research traditional Japanese salt-making processes, and will be working on laboratory techniques to grow salt crystals from sweat and seawater. Her work during this period will explore the boundaries between the microscopic world, the hidden flows and the city landscape.
Genietta Varsi holds an MA from Aalto University (Finland) and a BFA in Sculpture from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her work has been exhibited at group exhibitions and film festivals across the Americas and Europe, including the 13th Bienal do Mercosul (Brazil, 2022). She has also presented her work in solo exhibitions in São Paulo, Prague, and Lima.